bitchy-bitch

(That title is only funny if you're old enough to remember the old cartoon 'Richie Rich'.)

I do an incredibly petty, bitchy thing at work.

Through a combination of customer comments and using your employee discount to buy way more shit than you would otherwise be able to afford, working at a clothing retailer usually results in a fairly substantial knowledge of the merchandise's various features and quirks. You know this style fits short people better than that one, these shirts are stretchier, the shoes run a little on the big side, and so on. Old Navy makes some awesome super-tight skinny jeans, and makes them in a bunch of colours. There's various denim shades and black and white, but also bubblegum pink, fire engine red, rusty brown, and eye-spanking blue. (They make purple and green, as well, but not for our store.) I've grown to like skinny jeans even though I'm horribly self-conscious of my lower body, and I've learned that these particular jeans have a weird size variation based on the material they're made from.

The denim-coloured, black, white, and grey jeans are all made of stretchy denim material and have a lot of stretch to them and accommodate most figures really easily--but all the other colours, possibly due to the dying process, are made from a completely different material that's more like artist canvas than denim. It's not uncomfortable, but it also isn't NEARLY as accommodating. The material hardly has any give to it at all, and being that the style itself is meant to be worn very, very snug, nobody can fit into their 'normal' size. You have to get one or two sizes up from what you're used to because the material is so rigid. (For example, I wear a 6/8 but had to buy my red jeans in a size 10--the others I have in the same style are grey and dark denim and fit normally.) But most people aren't aware of this.

I feel really badly for some of the women I see in the fitting rooms with these jeans when I hear their dismayed cries that they can't get them up over their thighs and oh my god, did I gain a lot of weight without knowing it?? It can be really frustrating to find yourself too big for old clothes, particularly when you're prone to body-image issues. If I happen to see one of these issues in the making by way of a woman being upset about the pants being too small, I always stop and let them know that the style runs extremely small and lacks stretch, so needing a size or two bigger has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the design of the pants. They always feel better when I say that. I also warn women when they're purchasing the jeans so they don't degenerate into panic when they get home and find the jeans don't fit.

So what makes me a bitch about it?

I only do it when the women in question wear a size eight or bigger. If they're skinny and buying a size zero or a two, I just keep my mouth shut. Let them get home and try on the pants and think they're getting fat. They could use a little taste of how the other half lives.