Yesterday at the store we had a customer come in who I knew from the lighting shop I used to work at a few years ago. At that job I often helped decorators and designers who were shopping for their clients and Dottie used us often. I asked her how business was going and she said, “I’m 83 years old. It goes as fast or slow as I want it to.” Then I asked her how she got into doing that. “Well, it would take me two hours to tell you my story.”
It was a slow day. I egged her on.
She is a recovering alcoholic. Forty years sober. She was a nanny to her grandkids then they moved to Hong Kong. She always liked to decorate. Her birth sister told her she needed to make a job of it. The sister she found in adulthood after living in an orphanage. She moved from one side of the state line to the other to be in a neighborhood with young families that needed help with their houses. She made flyers and passed them around. She thinks you should use what you have to decorate before you run out to Pottery Barn. Her son started a company that went public and the shares weren’t worth much until a few years ago. All these years of scraping by and now life is easier. That’s why she can come in once in awhile and buy herself something nice.
The writer in me urged Dottie to get this story written down for her grandkids. She laughed, said skip the bag I’m trying to conserve and her and her dog left.
Today I waited on somebody who bought several things – one being a heavy winter coat. Too heavy to carry to the parking garage and so we said we’d hold onto her things and wait for her to pull up in front of the store. I waited and waited and waited. Finally, I left everything in front and finished something else up at the register.
That’s when I heard the honking.
Is that woman honking for her clothes?
Yes she was.
She popped the trunk of her car but I was already putting her bags in the back seat. As revenge goes it wasn’t much……….unlike the disgruntled employee who put rat poison in the salsa at a local Mexican restaurant………..but at least I made her get off her behind to shut her trunk.
She should write that down.