Spray Testing.

There is new meat in the Hall of Plenty.
The bright eager faces of the spray tester girls on the promotional stand, bring new life to the Spring Season, filling the hall with fragranced enthusiasm. Bless them, like lambs to the slaughter.
The shine had definitely worn off by tea time, in fact one of them had had a minor melt down and rushed off the shop floor in tears.
You have to be tough in this business and spray testing is the toughest gig of all. On display by a door in the freezing cold, or at the heart of a shop floor in front of expensive shiny surfaces, you can't be too pushy or too shy. It's a fine balance between offering someone a spray of fragrance to try and badgering the living daylights out of them.

Watching the 'New Meat' the girls and I were reminded of just how hard it is. You step forward, smile in place, bottle at the ready, opening statement on the tip of your tongue and you get the brush off. It could be the open handed, 'No!' Or the , 'I can't hear you' shuffle. That is when the customer hastily tries to get past slower shoppers without acknowledging you, forcing them to perform an erratic forward, stop, side step. Which is, more often than not, followed by shoving past some elderly woman in a fleecy.

It's not easy , so please spare them a smile even if you say 'No thanks.'

Why?

My burning feet and  your one ridiculous question,
 'What colour  do you think I am?'
What does that even mean? I can see what colour you are. So you mean, what colour do I think you should wear.
The funny thing is that if I say brown, you won't like brown . If I say pink, believe me, pink won't be the colour for you because you think pink looks cheap. Red  then, 'no dear I don't do red, too tarty.'
So why do you ask?
 Is it some sort of bizarre quiz, or test? Do you go home and tell the family that they wouldn't believe what some girl at the beauty counter said,
'I'm autumnal, me winter colours, ridiculous!' And then you and your colour co-ordinated family laugh in a superior, contrasted and slightly charming way.
It's just make up

Scandalous!

Scandal has rocked the Hall of Plenty. I wouldn't have thought it possible but we have not, seen and heard everything in the beauty business, not until today that is.
Our own counter's resident Miss Marple overheard the fuss but got the details over a sandwich and tea up in the canteen.
Security  has always been strict, given the glories each floor can provide to them that have. It would seem that the Chaps have been hunting down a mystery thief who manages to pilfer no matter what, so imagine our surprise when one of the staff from another floor is caught red handed with stock. I say red handed......
Apparently and she swears it to be true, that the lady in question was caught with a bottle of fragrance, in her knickers.
Now I don't have much sympathy with the girl, but I would truly be mortified if I was ever searched, only to produce a bottle of scent from my Lady Garden.
'She who must be obeyed'  needed more eyeliner and a lie down after that one. There is truly, 'nowt as queer as folk.'

When vanity becomes insanity.

There has been little time to update the blog this week, in between the domestic drama's and Spring promotions at the Hall of Plenty, I was lucky to emerge from under the giant pile of washing generated by one very messy girl and two mud covered boys. (One of them pays the mortgage and should know better!) 
 Now, there are few things that can strike fear into the heart of a beauty consultant. The mention of Store Cards and the phrase, 'Stock Take' being two examples of things that definitely do leave us quaking in our court shoes, however usually we are pretty impervious to most things. (Those nylon outfits can repel almost any customer related overspill, fluid or otherwise.) Yet the customer that arrives fifteen minutes before closing at the end of a really busy day, wishing to try on lipstick's with no definite idea of what they are looking for, is every self - respecting tut' pushers nightmare.
 When the well-veneered lady that arrived at the counter last night,  first approached . I knew it was to good to be true. 'No!' she didn't need any help. Then she said,
'Well actually, could you tell me what lipsticks don't make your teeth look yellow.'
It's a little known fact that coral coloured lipsticks make discoloured teeth look yellow. Coral being a shade of orange and not, as one exasperated colleague told over six customers last week, pink. Okay, NOT PINK!
Anyway, as I sighed and any thoughts of getting out of work on time vanished, little did I know just how odd my evening would get.
She didn't agree, nor did she agree with the seven shades I tried on her. When I pointed out that absolutely nothing would make her teeth look yellow because,
 'They are white veneers.'
She didn't agree with that either. Well, misses who ever you where, I think the giveaway was the luminous day glo white and the fact that you looked as if you mugged a racehorse on the way into the store. Thank you for making me late for my sons bedtime, thank you for making me sit in traffic going to some concert and thank you very much, for making me realise that sometimes vanity is only a couple of messed up letters away from insanity.