(A little background: I spent 20 years in the corporate world as a communications hack before I just couldn't take the self-evaluations, staff meetings, team-building exercises, micromanagement and being surrounded by other people who suffered from the same profound sense of dread for one more second. Decided to take a break and got a great little part-time job in an eccentric costume shop and am loving life. These are my stories so far, as told via Facebook. See Vol. 1 here and Vol. 2 here.
8/30/2013
Today in two middle-aged women working
in a costume shop: Lou Ann climbed up the ladder into the 9-foot-high storage
loft and couldn't climb back down on account of her trick knee. I could not
look up at her while dying laughing for the whole 10 minutes it took for help
to arrive on account of my vertigo.
9/4/2013
Today in firsts: A woman with a
Northeastern accent asked me to slow down because I was talking too fast while
giving a tour of the store.
9/5/2013
It's getting to be that time of the
year when customers will come into the costume shop saying, "We're going
to a costume party and don't know what we want to be." I can't imagine
having no imagination, but I remind myself that it's a safe bet each and every
one of them are better at algebra than me.
9/6/2013
A nice lady from the
Rolesville, N.C., Chamber of Commerce called the costume shop today to ask if
we had a pig mascot suit available for their barbecue cook-off. She asked me to
describe him, so I went through the spiel: "He's pink and really cute. He
comes with a head, full bodysuit and two shoe covers."
"Is he naked?" she
asked.
"No, ma'am," I
responded cheerfully. "He comes with a full bodysuit."
"But I'm gonna have to
put some pants on him or something," she replied.
"Uh, ma'am? He's not
anatomically correct," I said.
When I told Mr. Sweetypants
that story, he said I should have followed through on that sentence with,
"If he was, we'd charge a whole lot more for him."
9/13/2013
Reason #728 I love my job at the
costume shop: The phrase "Just because you waited until the last minute
doesn't make it an emergency for me" truly applies in retail. Life with no
deadlines is magical.
9/14/2013
Yesterday at the costume shop,
I transformed an unassuming woman into a knockout Magenta for her very first
ever late-night Rocky Horror at the Rialto experience. She was nervous about
being branded a virgin and I gave her advice on what to do and say to maximize
her experience.
I always tell the customers I
like to bring me pictures when they return their rentals so I can see how
fabulous they looked.
"Are camera phones
allowed inside?" she asked.
"Not sure," I
replied. "They hadn't been invented last time I went."
9/21/2013
This randomly appeared out of nowhere
in the back room of the costume shop in the middle of the afternoon. We have no
idea where it came from and had all walked through there repeatedly before it
just showed up. At least it wasn't dressed as a clown.
9/26/2013
The 20-year old helping us out through busy season at the costume shop just asked me, "Where do grownups go for Halloween, anyway?" "We usually go to K&W Cafeteria," I replied.
9/27/2013
Today in brain farts: For a good three
beats, I could not, for the life of me, come up with the word
"pants." While costuming a man.
10/2/2013
A customer with a phobia of rubber
snakes didn't even see them in the store before having a meltdown that blows
every single picture-of-a-tree-frog freakout any of you have witnessed from me
right out of the water. Thank you again for your patience, by the way
10/5/2013
I was chatting with a customer here at
the costume shop in Raleigh about Ocean Isle Beach. Come to find out, his uncle
owned the IGA. "I got fired from there!" I blurted out
enthusiastically. Small world.
10/7/2013
Today at the costume shop, I was
helping a particularly persnickety customer try on vintage sailor suits when he
accidentally knocked into the camel hard-head on the floor and it landed on his
foot. I blurted out, "Look! You've got a camel-toe!" He liked me
after that.
10/9/2013
Aww, man! I haven't been to a drive-in
movie since I was a kid in Shallotte. Today at the costume shop, the manager of
the historic Raleigh Road Drive-In in Henderson called and asked if Louie or I
would be available to be expert judges at their costume contest. I was tickled!
But alas, it's being held the Saturday before Halloween (our busiest day of the
year) and it's waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy outside the beltline.
10/10/2013
The young girl helping out at the
costume shop keeps quizzing me about my hatred of clowns. Today, she asked,
"What about mimes?" "They're just stupid," I replied,
"and I could totally take a mime down if one came at me."
10/11/2013
Today in things I said to a customer at
the costume shop, presented without context: "Enjoy your butt!"
10/11/2013
Today, a soccer mom in the costume shop
complimented me on my Atomic Pink hair color and asked me how it affects my
mood. Nobody has ever asked me that before. I said, "When I look in the
mirror, I see who I feel like inside."
10/14/2013
I sure wish running around the costume
shop during crazy-busy season affected my abs like it does my calves. I would
be RIPPED by November 1.
10/16/2013
Met a customer who actually knew that
Shallotte, N.C., is a real place. When I told him I was from there, he asked,
"Downtown or the suburbs?" "Inside the Shallotte Beltline,"
I replied.
10/18/2013
A woman came into the costume shop and
said, "I was here a couple of days ago and decided to come back and get
your wig." I asked her which wig she'd decided on and she said,
"Yours. The one you're wearing."
10/20/2013
Before leaving our costume shop without
buying anything, the douchey guy asked Louie if she could tell him where the
nearest Spirit Halloween pop-up store was located. "Hell no," she
replied. God I love that woman.
10/23/2013
Today in things I had an opportunity to say: A customer
informed me she usually wore a size 6. And in a great feat of restraint, I did
not blurt out: "I usually drive really fast Italian sports cars in my
dreams."
10/24/2013
One of my grad school professors from
State came into the costume shop tonight. I introduced myself and told him I
took a fiction writing class from him many years ago. "How'd things turn
out for you?" he asked. "As you see," I replied with a grin.
10/25/2013
Eight hours running at full speed
around on the concrete floor at the costume shop every day... I ain't even
trying to look cute in the feet area. These shoes have been good to me this
week.
10/26/2013
Today is Black Friday in costume shop
land. Give me strength not to bitch-slap someone...
10/30/2013
Triangle friends: Set your DVRs for My Carolina Today on
WNCN tomorrow at 11 a.m. We’ll be in a live segment on "punny"
costumes. I will be turning blue, tears streaming down my face, trying
desperately to suppress the dry, hacking cough that I can't seem to kick on
live television...
10/31/2013
Welp. I didn't cough. I did, however,
wander right off the stage before I was supposed to...
10/31/2013
Living the dream.
11/1/2013
Or: How I briefly learned not to be a
hater.
A woman with a Holly Aiken bag and perfect
blonde highlights came into the costume shop at the last minute looking for a
sexy superhero costume for a party tonight... while our store is tore-up and
picked over as we recover from the busiest time of the year.
All of our superheroes and Star Wars
costumes have been booked out solid for this two-week period since August. She
insisted that she had to be a recognizable character, so Louie asked me to show
her some Egyptian togas so she could go as "Isis" from the TV show
back in our childhood.
"I don't think she understood
me," the woman said, a little too shortly, to me when Louie was out of
earshot, "I need to look like a sexy superhero." I followed Louie's
lead and took her to the laptop at the front counter and Googled images from
"Isis" to prove to her that the character was, in fact, kick-ass.
She was starting to really get on my
nerves at that point, so I found the smallest toga and asked her to try it on.
When she came out of the dressing room in her Lululemon spandex sports bra and
pants with her tight, flat belly, complaining that it was way too big, I kinda
put off the "there's nothing I can do for you and you are about to work my
last nerve" vibe.
The woman realized how "skinny and
rich" she had come off to Louie and me and started pouring her heart out.
"I'm so sorry, it's just that I
haven't been able to wear anything sexy since before I had children. I used to
weigh 370 pounds, as you can see."
She then pointed out the long scars inside
her arms, across her stomach and on her chest where she'd had her excess skin
removed after losing all the weight through a diet program at Duke Hospital.
She was a divorced mom whose daughter won a full scholarship, so she bought her
daughter a car and spent the tuition money she'd saved up to complete her long
journey back to health. Though it's been two years since her surgery, she told
us, "I still reach down to hold my skin up when I pee, even though it's
not there anymore."
After she showed us a "before"
picture of herself that she carries in her wallet, Louie and I were screaming,
"Girl! We're gonna make you fabulous!"
11/5/2013
A distinguished, older couple
wandered into the costume shop while waiting for the restaurant next door to
open. I told them that everything in the back was for rent and everything in
the front was for sale.
"You're in the
front," the man said. "Are you for sale?"
"Yep, and I'm
cheap," I replied.
"But are you any
good?" he asked.
"You get what you pay
for, sir," I said with a smile.
11/13/2013
The heat was off all day in the costume shop. I gave
serious thought to putting on the Chewbacca getup.
11/22/2013
Reason #852 I love my job at the quirky
little costume shop: Today, an older man with an elaborate, whimsical, gray,
handlebar mustache came in to purchase an elaborate, whimsical, gray, handlebar
mustache to put on his five-month-old grandson for the family Christmas card.
11/30/2013
Just burned off extra Thanksgiving
calories by running from one end of the costume shop to the other, waving a
broom over my head and trying to coax a little bird to fly out the open door.
12/4/2013
I was unsure of whether my outfit was
over-accessorized, so I asked Mr. Sweetypants for a second opinion. He replied,
"You're going to the costume shop," quickly adding, "That was a
compliment!"
12/4/2013
What the customer actually asked:
"Are you Leigh Ann?" What I heard: "Are you a man?" Still
wouldn't be the strangest thing anyone's ever asked me at the costume shop.
12/5/2013
Long story short, I put the
"Out of my mind, back in five minutes" sign up and ran two doors down
to Herzburg Furs with the unlabeled Mrs. Claus dress in a panic, looking for my
buddy, the fur technician, to help me figure out if it would fit a size 18. She
wasn't there and the super snooty salesman was not expecting to see me, but
totally sized it perfectly on sight.
I like to think that he's
posting a "crazy thing happened to me today at work" FB status about
the pink-haired chick from the weird costume shop busting through the door with
a Mrs. Claus dress.
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