by Darren Horton

Created on: January 07, 2011

A young sales-assistant hovered nearby, eager, freshly-trained in the unsubtle art of Retail.  Her mouth twitched with anticipation but she fought against the impulse to intervene, not wanting to scare me away with the hard-sell.  She was good this one, well-trained.  She was waiting for the right moment, giving me a chance to make a choice myself, keeping the pushy pretendly-friendly persona reigned in.  So she hovered; counting on another sale; wanting to impress the Manager; hoping for a raise; a promotion; praise; hardly daring to breath; trying to contain her enthusiasm; smiling; eager; hovering; waiting patiently to make a move.

I tried to avoid (come-talk-to-me-help-me) eye-contact with the crazy-hoverer but she desperately needed a fix of customer-interaction, or else her head would explode.

“Can I help you with anything, sir?” she said.

I knew she was going to say that.  She probably expected the response, “no, just looking, thanks” before I said that, too.  I bet she heard it a thousand times a day.  Act 1: First Contact.  Acting out the same role, day in, day out; repeating the same lines, following the same scenario, practised, played-out, perfected; delivered a thousand times a day, becoming second nature, until the Retail-animal within takes a hold and you can no longer tell which is the real person and which is fake. 

Unperturbed at my response, she took a step back, stood to attention and gave me another minute to decide.

The truth was I really did need assistance but I’m a middle-aged man and it didn’t feel appropriate to be discussing the merits of lingerie with another woman, especially one so young.  It didn’t seem to bother her though.  I suppose she was used to it.

I hung the bra back on its hanger and looked around for something a little bigger.  It’s difficult to judge when you’re bra-shopping for someone else, especially if you’re a man.  I didn’t understand the bra-jargon or the meaningless numbers so I picked up another and cupped the pad, trying to visualize the suitability.

“Is there anything in particular you’re looking for, sir?” she asked.  

I went red.  My wife has pretty big breasts.  Cupping the bra seemed the logical way to assess the required size but it must have looked perverted.

“A bra,” I said, handling the fiftieth.  I gripped a strap in

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