I just came back to work after a very unsatisfying trip downtown to get some clothes. I thought it was going to be easy. I was wrong.
See, living in an underprivileged country like Germany means certain limitations on shopping freedom. Like laws for closing times. And laws for sales. They kind of lowered the restrictions and are constantly working on lowering them even more, but somehow I got lost on the track. I thought they changed the laws on sales to that degree where every shop can have a sale any time, but even if I'm right, I discovered that the old habits still stick. Which means that we still have the traditional winter and summer sales, which are supposed to help the stores get rid of their winter resp. summer collections when nobody wants to buy them anymore.
They're just having winter sales.
What I was planning to buy was easy. I calculated a total amount of time needed of approximately 30 to 40 minutes spent in the one clothes store I like best. I planned to walk in there, grab a few things I liked, try them on and hopefully walk out with what I liked best. I even planned to spend more money than usual. I need some business outfit that I can wear for job interviews and probably my orals next Wednesday. I was thinking a pair of trousers with a matching blazer. Possibly a new blouse. Couldn't be too hard.
Did I mention they're having winter sales?
This is what actually happened. The store I planned to go to is closed for the moment due to... something I forgot. But they have another store not too far, so I walked all the way down there to get what I wanted.
I walked in and naturally found a nice dress, black with little flowers, that looked perfect and was cheap, so I grabbed it and went to look for my business clothes. By then I thought it could only get better.
Instead it got worse.
Obviously they just don't have a sale, they have nothing but a sale. Which wouldn't be too bad if they'd only left the clothes where they were before the sale. Which they didn't. They arranged the clothes in a new way, which summed up could be described as: 'All the blazers here and the trousers... heck, put them there in the back, yeah, right across the floor. Gee, I can't even see them anymore. Yep. Leave them there.'
Do I need to tell you that I came back to work empty handed?
At first I tried. I looked through the blazers and found one I liked, then I searched for matching trousers. Didn't work. Then I tried it the other way round. I looked through the trousers, found some I liked and tried to find the matching blazer. Didn't work either. After a short while of trial and error I gave up. It was no use, really. I don't have a lot of patience with clothes shopping as it is, but browsing through clothes endlessly just in hope to find a matching pair of trousers which most possibly doesn't even exist didn't occur to me as the thing I'd like to do for the next few hours.
I was willing to pay a lot of money, guys. So, your discount looks nice, yeah, but I actually rather would like to find some clothes.
As in matching clothes.
