Shop Assistants and Their Games

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Shop assistants should change the tired script.

“Oh! That looks good on you.”
The top you just tried on in the fitting room has sunflowers.  They are big flowers and that adds another two pounds on your body.  The yellow exposes the do-it-yourself on your head, regretting why you didn’t stick to the tried and tested natural colour of your hair.  The top has purple buttons, which shows that designers also have bad days.

 The shop assistant assisting you, is probably a good person, but she has been corrupted by the It looks great on you script.  She wants to be honest and tell you that the top is a disaster because of your height, weight and the bad hair colour experiment, but she can’t.

Her mother boasts that her daughter is a shop assistant.  Her boss calls her a sales representative, the new retail-speak.  Her job is to sell as many clothes as possible otherwise the store will go bankrupt and she’ll be out there panhandling.  The boss is always reminding them of the competition: online shopping.

I checked out a new outlet shopping mall in July and the sales representative told me.
“I like your bag.  I got one for my sister in burgundy.”

It’s a bag that is only sold by her store. Maybe the script has changed after all.  I didn’t know that one.
By:  Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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