‘Just’ a Sales Assistant…
I wrote a post on LinkedIn when I started my part time job as a Sales Assistant at a lingerie store a couple of months ago. I didn’t realise it at the time but even though I keep saying I don’t care what people think, I’m still very clearly trying to justify the choices that I am making in my life - especially the ones to do with my career.
The journey of my career has been an interesting one and one which has defined a HUGE part of my identity…
I decided that I didn’t want to work in the same way that I used to and I’ve stood by that. I decided that I only wanted to do the things that make ME happy - the things that set my soul on fire.
So when I think about my job now, I can’t stop thinking about the people I feel privileged to meet - the ones who make it more than just a job.
I hear snippets of so many stories from the counter where people come to pay but most often from the fitting room where people who I’ve only met for sometimes 5 minutes tell me all about their lives. That’s the part I look forward to the most.
I keep thinking about the incredible woman who had not one but TWO stoma bags - she’d had surgery on her bowel but there was a complication which meant she had to have her bladder removed too. Yet here she was buying beautiful lingerie to try and help her feel just a little bit more sexy again.
The woman whose husband died in summer so she was buying pyjamas for herself because she told me the bed felt cold without him.
The woman who had been wearing a 32C her whole life but was fitted into a 32FF!
The woman who was adamant she didn’t want a non-padded bra but who left looking (and hopefully feeling) stunning in one that fit her absolutely perfectly.
[See, bras are like clothes - we don’t suit them all. Our bodies are all different so I’m not sure why we all think we should fit into every single shape and style of bra…]
Then there was the teenage girl who came in with her Mam who had been fitted by us before. Her Mam thought she knew best but she was still squeezing her daughter into a bra that was two cup sizes too small.
The girl whose grandma brought her in to get properly fitted for her first ever ‘nice’ bra because she was worried about her granddaughter’s relationship with her body. Despite being a Size 6, she had apparently stopped eating because she thought she was fat so her grandma thought that some nice underwear might help her to see herself with slightly kinder eyes.
Then her sister who is the only person, to date - that I’ve known of anyway - to come in for a fitting already wearing the right size bra.
The teenage girls who come in giggling to buy their pink lace thongs and the slightly older teenage girls who have left having been taught how to properly wear their suspenders and the difference between stockings and hold ups.
The woman who was in recovery from cancer and had lost a lot of weight but who was inspiring in her resilience and her attitude towards life.
Then the endless stream of women who have put on weight after giving birth or just because they’ve gotten older or who have fluctuated in their weight and size because they are… shock horror… human! They come in speaking so negatively about their bodies and their lumps and their bumps - lumps and bumps that we ALL have in one way or another but lumps and bumps that we still just aren’t really seeing in mainstream media.
So yes - I am ‘just’ a Sales Assistant. But these are not just stories. They are real people with real lives and I absolutely love being even just a teeny tiny part of their story.
A lot of them probably won’t remember me (and there’s a strong possibility that I won’t remember them either) but their stories will stay with me.
A properly fitted bra is often so much more than that - or even what might just seem, on the surface, to be a simple pair of pyjamas.
Maybe I’m not just a Sales Assistant after all…
