my child is gifted

There just isn’t enough time to spare in this rare, — and as usual — tiny window of writing time to describe the feelings of wretchedness and guilt that always crawl out of the back of my mind upon entering a big box store that has pushed a Canadian retailer into the history books. Suffice to say that my love of the tongue-twisting endeavor to buy Canadian from Canadians who keep as much as possible in Canada coupled with a passionate attempt to give all my love to small businesses covers the important points.

Of course this totally makes no sense given my vigorous embracement of the imminent arrival of Tarjay coupled with a proclivity for shopping at alphabet-inclined-monikered foreign shops offering insanely affordable coffee tables with unpronounceable names or super-soft tees made in countries requiring google searches to see if it exists or is just a cheeky and totally not ironic name of a hipster clothing company.

Good thing run-on sentences aren’t a crime or the fact that I can’t explain why I can shop guilt-free at some big box stores without seeming like a total hypocrite in less than 200 words seems inexcusable yet there it is.

Anyway. This past October 30th I found myself looking deep into the abyss. For those wondering, the slaughterer of small businesses has automatic doors and a greeter who makes you feel that must-be-suppressed-immediately-lest-you-cry sad that isn’t due to ineffective job skills but does make you wonder if ‘melancholy’ is a job requirement.

Yes, I was at that big box store, the one I try to avoid at all costs. There I was and I reeked of desperation, total undeniable desperation.

FTR: I do not judge anyone who shops there because the prices are ridiculous, unbelievably ridiculous and  as anyone knows after spending any amount of time online that sometimes it’s hard to argue with ridiculous. Also being budget-conscious I totally get it but please know that I’m not judging those who shop at this store, my vendetta stems from a personal goal to not give business to corporations that appear to be run by untouchables who tear more pages from the Death Star operations manual than getting in touch with any available remnants of conscience found in the boardroom.

But back to my desperation. My child wanted a genuine polyester Gryffindor robe and a whittled-from-fake-plastic-trees wand that no home-made version could even hold a battery-operated flickering tealight against costume set and dammit to hell any lofty ideas that consumerism can be achieved guilt-free, my kid was getting that f’ing costume even if it meant a descent into hell.

Acclimatizing at what appeared to be a juncture of mega-grocery meeting mega-mega department store, I scanned for Hallowe’eny looking stuff while waiting for the denial to kick in so I could enjoy the ride to savings. Yet all my recon found was a few pallets holding maybe a metric ton of bulk candy plus two rolling racks of very picked-over costumes, which pretty much meant Halloween paraphernalia was ’out of stock’ in the bowels of the behemoth. After verifying not a drop of Hogwarts was in the available inventory, it would be a lie for me to deny that relief was felt in not finding anything even remotely Potter-esque on those racks. No blood costumes this year!

“Can I help you find something?”

It’s hard to tell where she came from and I can’t eliminate that possibility that she was hiding in the rack but there she was, a blue-smocked perky girl of the teenage variety holding what looked like radiation-producing scanner in one hand and wildly gesticulating her interpretation of ‘help’ with the other. It had been so long since my last positive customer service experience that I was temporarily stunned by her enthusiasm.

When I came to, she was still there, asking questions.

“Did you find everything you were looking for? Are you looking for a costume? Which one? Did you see this mermaid one, I think it would fit you…”

“Uh… it’s not for me, it’s for my kid, she wants Harry Potter stuff and that’s okay because she has some choices and maybe I’ll just go… is that the exit way over there?” I was already prepping the ‘sorry kid, no luck, but mommy bought you this guilt doughnut to make up for it‘ speech in my head and searching for any glimpse of natural daylight to guide my departure but she ignored my body language.

“Have you been to our Hallowe’en section yet? It’s over there, on the left, I think...” and with that she started marching down the main aisle all while beckoning for me to follow her and holy crap was this person actually helping me?  was all I could think. So obviously I followed her to see how this would unfold. Would she leave me stranded so far from the exit that I had no hope of making it home before Christmas? Would she be one of those rare gems who can define customer service? Should I be leaving a bread crumb trail just in case it’s the former? Apparently asking questions is contagious.

During a journey that seemed to take at least 20 minutes, she did an excellent job at information gathering.

HER: “My name is Stephanie, what’s yours?”

ME: “Uh… yeah but no… do you still have children’s costumes because my doctor told me not to do any strenuous activity in high altitudes and it seems like we’ve been walking forever and this place is north of Steeles so…”

HER: “There is only one aisle left of kids costumes, it’s pretty picked over and I haven’t seen any Harry Potter stuff in a while and I was here last night and omg I had to clean these aisles up before closing and omg I thought I was going to go go insane because OMG it’s crazy and how old is your kid?”

ME: “Uh… what? Six… wait, how long have you been in this store? Do they keep you here for more than 10 hours because I think that might not be legal…”

“WE’RE HERE!” She announced it with a flourish and I expected no less after our bonding session. As she stood in the aisle of costumes she spread her arms and had a look on her face that was excitement tinged with what was either crazy or sleep-deprivation and/or Red Bull.

“I’ll take the left, you take the right.” She commandeered and like a lemming, I started sifting through tangled hangers ladened with some of the strangest get-ups I had ever laid eyes on. After what seemed like hours and three-attempts on my part to abort the mission, I had resigned myself to spending an eternity elbow-deep in synthetic horror/whore-wear. Spirits were low, suspicious rashes were forming on my hands, and the smell of poly-vinyls were burning the inside of my nostrils. Brain-bleeds were on the horizon, I just knew it. Maybe she had already succumbed and I could just sneak out but one glance over my shoulder confirmed she wasn’t giving up. She was muttering ‘nope, not it‘ after almost every flick of a hanger and those mummers had become so melodic that I almost shit my pants when she screamed.

In fact she screamed twice. The first time it was just a regular heart-stopping scream but the second time it was a triumphant scream of ‘OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG I FUUUUC… I MEAN, I FOUND IT!!!!!‘ and then I kid you not, she started jumping up and down like she had just won a car all while clutching one pint size Harry Potter robe, magic stick, and over-sized round glasses.

I was actually more excited for Stephanie than for the find. This was the happiest woman I had seen in a long time and oh my holy heck did she love her job or what? And for the first time in ages that lump of cynical coal that is firmly entrenched in my chest thumped with elation and suddenly I was so happy that she felt so happy and wow that was a weird feeling to have in the middle of a big box store, especially in terms of customer service, but I rode the wave of exuberance and even successfully ignored my little cynical friend who sits on my shoulder sharing only negative narratives — I call him Todd — when he whispered ‘she’s probably high.’

Then reality snapped me away from the celebration. Realizing that hours had passed and I was beginning to forget what the intended recipient of  the object of our search looked like, I had to bring this to an end because Stephanie wasn’t going to  – she looked like she wanted to par-tay. So I did something that even surprised Stephanie, I threw my arms open and I hugged her. Oh yes I did. I hugged a stranger in a Walmart uniform who theoretically saved Hallowe’en for my family though I think any reasonable person would agree that that assessment seems extreme, I hugged her because I knew it would calm her down. That said, there is no denying I received excellent, above-and-beyond customer service that day and I made sure her management recorded it because high or not, she didn’t need to do what she did and she could have directed me to that aisle and left me there, discouraged at the idea of searching through an endless corridor of cheap tulle and toxic chemicals. But she didn’t and whenever that happens to me I make sure that person’s supervisor and/or company knows what they did and what a difference it made.

I may not want to go back into the abyss because of my personal beliefs but when the desperation next sets in I’ll give that store a repeat customer because they seem to be doing something right.

Oh and believe it or not, that’s not the point of my story telling. The point of my retelling of events is that after all this nonsense, after risking life, limb, beliefs, sanity, and after entering into the valley of death, my kid decided right before we left to go trick-or-treating that she didn’t want to wear that costume. She flat our refused. She refused to acknowledge that I had spent weeks combing smaller stores and figuring out the astronomical cost of having a costume made locally before finally swallowing defeat and taking an 11th hour trip of last resort to a store that stands for so many things I hate. And for that I say ‘my child is gifted‘. My child is gifted** with the ability to make my head hit my desk at an astounding rate for reasons that I could never see coming and that my friends, is totally not the greatest gift of all. Yet there it is.

** she also has a gazillion other real gifts but sometimes mommy needs to record the ones she prays are ‘just a phase’ to remind herself that the path to shaping a citizen is often filled with stones pounded with fists and those bloody knuckles are totally worth the results.