It's All There

I can stand tardiness. But I cannot stand rudeness. And I bring to you the hard truth and the truth is: Singaporean sale assistants are a bunch of rude tardy people. I am saying this because I myself have been a service provider (that sounds ambiguously dirty) for a good portion of my teenage and young adult life, but I have never been rude to any of my customers (again, I sound like a slut). Tardy, yes. Rude, never.

Oh, but the pain to experience it on my end. See I am a believer of effort. Now you can lie to me and tell me that yes, the cardigan doesn't come in a size S, but my dear sales assistant, I want to see an effort. Even if it takes you to go inside your store room, check your Facebook news feed for three minutes and come out and tell me, "Oh sorry, I've checked, there is no more size S", I'll take it. I want to believe that you have made an effort to find the cardigan in size S for me. I will and would always buy this delusion.

"It's all there" is not the answer I am looking for when I am asking for a new size. I know it's all there, I've checked. Thrice. And the size that I want is not there. That's what we go to school for love, to understand that S stands for Small, M stands for Medium, L stands for large and XL stands for fatties.

"It's all there", on good days, is a slap to my face. "It's all there", on a bad day, is a slap on my face, when I am having a bad day.

I normally go out shopping with Star, who happens to be one of the most patient person I know when it comes to shopping. She takes in the rude glances (because half of her tits are usually on display), the sniggering (a friend of a guy she slept with talking about her), the tardy attitude (It's all there, if don't have means don't have) and the rudeness (I don't know! *rolls eyes). And me, being me, I don't tolerate this kind of nonsense even if I just struck lottery. There isn't a feeling so euphoric that I can downplay the rudeness that some of these sales assistants give me. But boy was I wrong about Star.

We were at this three story store that sells the latest fashionable clothes in affordable prices (duh, don't make me spell it out) two days ago because Star needs to find a dress for a date she is going later in the evening.

"Because this is a first time I'm meeting someone, and I want to be wearing something new too. But I'm not wearing a dress that costs more than dinner on a first date. What if he is a bad fuck?", was her excuse when I asked her why there is even a need to go shopping for a dress in the first place.

So after forty minutes of browsing around the rather quiet store (weekday, before lunch), she decided to get herself a peplum dress in cream.

"Didn't you just got a peplum dress from MaxMara the other day?" I asked.

"Why can't I have two peplum dress? And this is in white, if he is the right man for me, I can go straight to the altar," Star flipped her hair.

"Stop showing your boobs. Why are you always wearing low cut tops?"

"Are you my father? Hey they don't have this in size 4," Star said, skimming the row of hangers.

"Ask a staff, maybe they have a size 4 in the storeroom. Big brands like these always stock up on more than 10 pieces for every size," I said.

So Star approached this young girl, with pink streaks in her hair who was folding sweaters beside us and asked for a size 4 and yes, it was the ever annoying, "It's all there."

"There isn't a size 4, maybe you could check for me in your storeroom?" Star asked.

"It's all there. If don't have means don't have!" the sales assistant raised her voice, face turning sour and disinterested.

"Do you have a storeroom?" Star asked.

"Urm...yes," the sales assistant answered, a tad confused.

"Where is it?" Star asked again.

"What?"

"Where is your storeroom?" Star asked again, raising her voice slightly.

"Why ma'am?" the sales assistant asked, slightly afraid now.

"No since you're lazy to check for me I thought I would go to the storeroom and find the dress myself. I mean, you obviously don't want to help me and looking at your dirty pink hair is making me queasy so I need to do something to get my mind off from wanting to barf in your ugly face," Star replied.

AWKWARD SILENCE. (I actually was sitting down and covering my mouth laughing)

"I'm not trying to be mean, or call you ugly, even though you are, but I just need this dress in a size 4 if there is any. If there isn't I will get out of here and finding something else. I just need you to tell me if there is any or there isn't, nicely. Fuck you," Star finished, and tossed the dress on the floor.

Shit, even I thought she was bit too much.