1. I clearly don’t make enough money in my life.
What do people do for a living that are able to afford paying $150 for a simple white serving bowl with a single, tiny flower painted in the middle of it? I’m assuming that Michelangelo must have done the diminutive artwork, because otherwise there’s just no reason. And a coffee maker that costs $500? An ugly coffee maker that looks like someone just added a filter to my first-grade teacher’s head. After she died.
2. Wireless phones are the new black.
Every single person in the store was talking on one. (Except me, of course. I politely chose to keep my communication device holstered, shoved into my jeans pocket where it would firmly remain during my visit, unless a startling but strangely-pleasant buzzing alerted my genitals that I had an incoming call.) I don’t think it’s right to meander around a store with a possibly unhealthy chunk of slim metal spewing radiation into my ear, babbling loudly about unimportant things that no one else wants to hear.
Besides, you need to pay attention to what you are doing, which is, theoretically, shopping, and not analyzing footwear that this store doesn’t even sell, on the phone with your friend Brenda that hasn’t had a job since computers were invented. Do you see that towering stack of limited-edition cocktail glasses, signed by somebody in Sweden who might actually be important some day? If you knock that crap over while distracted with texting your boyfriend from three relationships ago, about tofu of all things, you are never going to make enough money the rest of your life to pay for the damages.
3. How have I lived my entire life without owning an appliance specifically designed to toast your individual miniature marshmallows so that your cocoa is just right while you watch polo being played?
How? The shame is overwhelming. I am incomplete.
4. There are still actually people named “Muffy” in the world.
At least I think that’s what her name was. Something like that. She might have been drunk, based on the application of her makeup. In any case, we became fast friends whilst perusing a display of enameled cooking tongs, trying to decide which of the 400 available colors would be appropriate after Labor Day. She babbled constantly. I grunted. Somewhere along the line I learned that she raises Berkshires. Or lives there. Something like that.
5. If you really, really like something, you can’t afford it.
This scenario happened repeatedly: I would turn a corner, spy something incredible and moving, race up to fondle it delicately, envision exactly where I could place it in my home, timidly flip over the little price tag, and find myself staring at a figure similar to one I had paid for a semester of college.
So I learned to not even bother with the most attractive things, because there was no point in setting myself up for that kind of disappointment. My mood-stabilizing medication can only do so much before we have to up the dosage. I only became intimate with mediocre and less-attractive things. Which also reminded me of college.
6. You would never know that the economy was in any kind of trouble based on the merchandise piling out of the store.
Entire fleets of trucks were backing up to the loading dock, with service people scurrying about, transporting the 144 place settings that one of the Vanderbilts had personally picked out. CEO types were marching in the door, barking take-over orders into the phone in one hand, and waving their other hand at the 15 armoires that the Missus needed before the next meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Our Money.
7. The workers in this place can tell if you have money just by one look.
I was constantly being shoved to the side by bustling employees who had noticed someone behind me with a higher credit-card limit. I was relegated to one of the new trainees, who didn’t know any better, and certainly didn’t know where anything was in the store. I had to assist her with another customer who was looking for the jewel-encrusted fondue prongs. She later asked me if I knew where the bathroom might be.
8. Rich people have a different accent.
It’s not a real accent, by any means, merely something they came up with during their spare time when they weren’t working for a living. They also like to add extra syllables to words like “really” and “darling”. It’s completely annoying. Then again, if I had enough money to spend the equivalent of the entire national budget of Algeria on a shot glass, I might find it imperative to come up with my own language as well.
9. The checkout people don’t care for it when you buy multiple small items.
Oh, they pretend to be all polite and everything, but they find it incredibly tedious to actually have to count things, especially lots of things that don’t cost very much. Sorry, folks. I can only afford these pointless tiny spoons over here, that one might use for ladling small amounts of caviar or feeding Barbie. So I’m going to give one to all of my friends and purposely leave part of the price tag on them so they can get the impression I shop here all the time. After all, it’s the Holidays, when people try to impress one another with their gift-giving, and we certainly have to uphold tradition.
10. Apparently it’s a social blemish to refuse a gift receipt.
I told the little man at least three times that I didn’t need one. (They’re stupid little spoons. If they don’t work out, people will just throw them in the trash and then lie about the disappearance, claiming burglary or some such.) The little man made small, exasperated noises each time I rebuffed his advances. Clearly, this man was completely worn out, having dealt all day with people who didn’t have an ounce of couth.
His little friend, the Gift Box Lady, was also troubled by the lack of a gift receipt. As she swathed each spoon in crackly packing materials and then shoved them in gleaming white boxes, she inquired on the status of the gift receipt for every single spoon, hoping each time that there would actually be one, and therefore the world could be a better place.
Eventually, I was allowed to leave the establishment, despite my country ways and gift-receipt illiteracy. I trotted out the door, lugging a bag loaded with spoons, wrapped in boxes that cost more than the actual contents. Before climbing in my car, I turned and waved at Muffy, who was standing on the sidewalk and wondering why no one was bringing her another cocktail…
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