Unmentionables

Stop reading right here if you don't want to learn more about women's underwear. As a professional in the fashion industry, it's my job to be in the know about such things and I thought everyone would want to know that Wal-mart now carries panties with heavily padded butt cheeks to make your butt look bigger. I didn't realize such a thing existed. I've never seen them in lingerie stores. Usually by the time fashions reach Wal-Mart, they're pretty mainstream but these bootylicious panties are causing quite a stir. Children giggle at them, old people are confused by them, college kids want their picture taken with them. I can't say for sure if anyone's been buying them. One girl who bought a pair told me she falls a lot when she's drinking and always wakes up with a bruised behind so these foam bums would be perfect. Another woman, a bartender, thought she might wear a pair to work and maybe men would stop pinching her butt if they found it was fake. I think they all feel the need to come up with some practical reason, when really they just want to look like J Lo. The woman I work with in the lingerie department is called Patricia and goes by 'Tish' for short. The day we got those panties in, I accidentally called her 'Tush' twice.

In other disturbing underwear news, I learned something new about a regular customer who often calls the store. The caller is a distinguished sounding elderly lady who wants to know what kind of thigh-highs we carry. I know the drill; this same lady has called several times before always with the same question. I suspected she was just lonely or maybe had some kind of age-related memory loss. I always go along with it because it's just a couple of minutes out of my day. Once I had the thigh-highs in hand, a typical conversation with her usually went something like this:

-LADY: Can you take them out of the package? Are they silky?
----ME: OK. Yeah, they're silky.
-LADY: Are you touching them now?
----ME: Yep. They're pretty silky.
-LADY: Is there lace?
----ME: Yes. There's lace around the top.
-LADY: What do you think, would you wear them?
----ME: Sure.
-LADY: What would you wear with them?
----ME: I think they'll stay up by themselves but you could wear a garter belt.

Now read it again, this time with the knowledge that instead of talking to an old lady with memory loss, I'm actually talking to a pervy man trying to sound like a woman. Here I thought I was providing excellent customer service when the whole time I was engaged in dirty talk with a stranger. It seems most of my co-workers had also talked to "her" several times but they had caught on to his game right away. No one bothered to tell me. This scenario was not covered in our sexual harassment training. I plan to use it when I bargain for a raise arguing that I could be getting paid a lot more for those services at other places. For now I guess I'll just suck it up, practice, and include these new talents in the Communication Skills portion of my resume.