Mall Times!!!

So I can't think of a good bus story to save my life. There are just a lot of smells and a lot of uncomfortable touching that is appropriate nowhere else in life. I do, however have much tamer stories of working at the mall.

I wish I had more pictures, but I have no more mall shifts for a month because I have to get a car to avoid all that uncomfortable bus touching on the way there.

This is the world's best representation of mall culture. People are basically Starbucks in expensive jeans (Okay ignore the fact that the tag right next to these jeans proves they're supah cheap... it was H&M, they're meant to look expensive). 

I'm right across from Five Guys, so sometimes it smells like french fries and I often get caught gazing out the window at some guy who thinks I'm actively watching him eat a cheeseburger by himself. I'm sure this makes us both equally sad about ourselves. We get a lot of pre and post bar traffic as well. My favorites are the women who stop in, pretend to look around and fix their hair and or makeup in one of our many mirrors on their way to the bar next door. I already told you about the woman who stopped in to change into her heels before a blind date. "I have the world's worst feet." Okay, whoa, I don't want to know the condition of some stranger's feet. I wanted to say, "then maybe you shouldn't show them to a man who might otherwise like you," but I held back. Why these women always feel like talking to me makes it more okay that they have no intention of buying anything is beyond me. Awkward small talk is not a goal we set for the day.

Last time I worked, no one bought a single thing all day, but someone did steal my pen, so, there's that. He politely asked to borrow it and then just walked out of the store without using it. Later the same day, a woman who had already walked around and checked every mirror we had about 15 minutes earlier came back in and asked to borrow the computer to check her email. I let her because, well, she couldn't very well walk out the door with the computer (or if she did, I would have an amazing story). She told me she had come to meet friends at the bar next door, but they had meant the Arena District location. Then she told me she never leaves the house after 9 o'clock and this was too much to deal with. What exactly do you do when a stranger tells you something so depressing? I might be that woman one day.

Okay, I felt the need to put another picture. These are some baskets. No reason.

The only other really exciting part of working at the mall is getting to go through the secret hallway behind the stores. The floor is concrete, our store's door still says Buckle on it and it reeks of that horrible cologne they pump into Hollister. It's. So. Cool. You only wish you were important enough to travel the seedy underbelly of the mall with such skill and purpose. (Okay so twice I've gotten lost on the way out and had to give the trash I was carrying to some maintenance guy with a big cart, but I feel special anyway). Keep the blog alive: check.