Retail Therapy

As I have previously established, last week was not my best week.  After writing my post on Friday, detailing the craptastic day I had on Thursday, I decided to go out to run some errands.  My first stop . . . the mall.

Now, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned on here before, but I despise the mall.  I am not a shopping girl.  I will shop when necessary.  Preferably not for clothing or shoes for myself.  I find it to be a miserable experience.  However, I needed to go to the mall because that is where the Apple store is.  My plan was to stop in, have them deal with the problem I was having with my phone, then get out of the mall and run around to a few other places I had planned on going that day.  Well, unfortunately, that is not what happened.  What happened is that I spent 5 freaking hours in the mall.

Here’s the sitch:  I get to the mall.  I go directly to the Apple store.  It is packed full of people.  There is a girl with an ipad standing at the entrance and I ask her what is going on.  She says they just got a surge of people and would I like for her to take my name to make a reservation.  Wait, are they serving food now at the Apple store?  They really are a full service company, huh?  Alternately, I ask if it would be better if I just come back in a bit when it might be less crowded.  She says that it should calm down in a little while and I should stop back.  I do not give her my name (big mistake!).

So now, I have some time to kill in the mall.  I decide to go next door to Macy’s.  I had received a 10% off coupon in an email, and thought I might look at some suits, since apparently the massive amount of carbs I’ve been eating have had some effect on whether or not I can fit into any of my suits.  Weird, right?

Well, long and short . . . I try on some suits, find one I like, buy it.  At this point, it’s been about an hour and I figure I will check back in with Apple.  If it is at all possible, it is more crowded than before.  I ask the girl what’s up with that.  She tells me it calmed down a bit, but then they got another rush of people (at this point I was hoping they were giving away ipads or something . . . no such luck).  So I finally go to “make a reservation” (completely ridiculous!), and she tells me the first available is an hour and a half from then.  What the what??

I am trapped.  IN THE MALL!  Dear sweet Jeebus, help me.

So I make the rez, and start to walk around.  I then walk by the salon where I usually get my hair cut, and figure, what the hell, let’s see if they have an availability.  They do.  So while I am waiting for freaking Apple to deem me worthy enough to allow entry into their holy sanctuary, I get a super cute haircut.  Not planned, but it was definitely needed.  And it is pretty rad.  Plus!  I didn’t have to shop while I was waiting for Apple.  Double rad.

Anyway, so I once again go back up to the store and they “check me in” for my appointment and tell me to go wait in the back.  So, I weave my way through about a million people crammed into this store and wait in this sort of holding area amongst a ton of other people already waiting for someone to help them.  Oh boy, this is gonna be fun.  I ask one girl who is sitting there how long she has been waiting.  45 minutes, she tells me.  Great.

So I sit.  And wait.  And wait some more.  Finally, I get one of their “geniuses” to help me (if he was a genius, I fear for the continued existence of Mensa, people), who has to keep asking the people around him what to do about my phone, and even go in the back so someone there can help.  Why are you here again?  Do they pay you for this “service?”  Hell, maybe I should get a job there.  I knew more about it than he did.  Sigh.

Anyway, so I finally finally finally leave the store, thinking ah freedom!  But also feeling wholly unsatisfied with my trip to the mall.  Granted, I got a cute haircut and a new suit.  But at this point, I had been in this godforsaken place for about 4 hours.  Four motherloving hours!!  So, as I was leaving the mall, thankful to be getting out of there alive, I walked by the one store that I actually like shopping at (no there is no Target at the mall, tragically).  It was Ann Taylor.  I love me some Ann Taylor.  It is usually too expensive for me, so I rarely shop there, but I figured since I was in the mall, which rarely occurs, and I was still feeling pretty down about my whole shitacular week, I would go check out their sale rack.

Well, I find 2 things I like, and go to check out.  Just by happenstance, there is a lady standing in front of me talking to one of the girls behind the counter.  The girl then hands this woman a stack of what look like coupons.  I glance over her shoulder and notice that one says “40% off.”  So I ask her, “are those coupons?”  And she kind of looks askance at me and says, “yessss?”  And I say, “may I have one?”  To which she responds by handing me 3.  Apparently, she works in one of the other shops in the mall and was going to take these to her store to hand out or something.  So, by just standing behind this woman and politely asking for one of these flyers, I now just saved a boatload of moolah.  Sweet!  Now, the mall isn’t looking so bad, huh?  (Wait, who said that?).

When I finally leave the mall, I have spent a total of 5+ hours in it’s clutches.  But I walked out with a new suit, a fresh new haircut, some cute Ann Taylor clothes at a great price, and for some reason, I felt a bit better.  Is this what they talk about when they say retail therapy?  Because this might have been my first session.  This could be a very expensive counseling endeavor, though.  I might have to stick to blogging therapy, instead, unless I want to dive head first into bankruptcy.

Oh, but that’s not the end of the story!  The next day, I ran over to Kohl’s.  I needed to get away from the kids and hubs for a while in the afternoon (still mad at hubs . . . could be because we haven’t spoken in 3 days?  Maybe). Anyway, Kohl’s is where I usually get clothes for me, because it’s cheap and so am I.  Wait, what?  Anyway, I had received a coupon in the mail for 30% off, and I wanted to get some boots.  So I headed over to find something cute to match the new haircut (what?  It totally works as an excuse!).  Somehow, I actually found the perfect pair of boots.  It is extremely hard for me to find boots that fit me because I have sort of small feet, normal ankles, and then big calves.  So I can never find knee high boots because they just will not fit over my big ole calves.  The boots I found, though, are the perfect height, plus they are super cute and comfy.  But wait!  Since it is Kohl’s, and everything is cheap there, plus I had a 30% off coupon, the boots only cost me . . . wait for it . . . 30 bucks!!  Score!

Cute, right?

So, all told, my shopping experience this weekend was pretty enjoyable, even spending 5 hours in the mall.  Now I just have to hope that feeling carries over into this next week, where I will be persona non grata in court.  It’s gonna be a tough week.  Maybe if I wear my new boots all week?  Wish me luck, peeps.

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