29 June, 2009 in Work by Aonghas

Working at Cotton On Kids

This morning I had a pretty late sleep in (oh the joys of the holidays!). When I woke up and reached for my phone, I saw that I had missed two phone calls. My manager at work tried calling and she also sent me a text asking if I could do a lunch cover at Cotton On Kids today. Since I didn’t really have anything else planned for the day I replied and said I could work. I started at 12pm and when I arrived at the Kids store I met Pauline for the first time. She took over as manager at Cotton On Kids after Denis left last month. She told me that there wasn’t a lot of stuff to do today; just a few boxes of stock. It was a pretty quiet day so there weren’t too many customers. But when Pauline went on her break, I was left to fend for myself in the store – not knowing ANYTHING about children’s clothing.

My first incident with a customer happened about 10 minutes after Pauline left. This lady was looking at these baby-looking one-piece thing with buttons at the top and she called me over. She asked me,

“Do you reckon I should get a size 0, because I think size 00 might be a bit too small?”

Size 0? Size 00?! I didn’t even know there was such thing as size 0! After a short pause of awkward confusion, I said “ummm… well how old is your baby?” That was a BIG mistake. Now she thought I actually knew what I was talking about so she started giving me a lengthy description about her baby and how she sometimes gets a certain size from Pumpkin Patch but it’s different at Cotton On… then when she finished talking, she expected me to give her my “professional opinion”. I felt like I was digging myself a bigger hole, so I just said “maybe you could go for the size 0, but if it’s too big you could always bring it back and exchange it”. Phew! Nice work, I thought.

After that little run-in I realised how little I knew about clothes for babies and even what was on sale and what wasn’t. I tried to generate a few generic answers I could give the customers just in case I didn’t know the answers to their questions. Over time I figured the response that worked the best was “oh um… sorry I don’t usually work here, I’m just filling in today for a lunch cover!” followed by a small chuckle. That usually stopped them from asking further questions.

My silliest incident happened just before Pauline got back from her break. This lady who was pretty pregnant was buying some clothes at the counter and we got talking about babies. I told her about my previous encounters with customers and how I didn’t know anything about baby clothes, while she just laughed and told me not to worry about it. Just as she was leaving, she saw some children’s headbands in a plastic box next to the counter. She picked one up and asked, “that would probably be a bit too big for a new-born don’t you think?” to which I replied,

“err… umm… I don’t know what a… baby looks like sorry!”

As soon as I said that, I realised how stupid it must have sounded. I tried to explain what I meant but before I could the lady said, “hahaha, oh don’t worry you’re doing well!” before walking out. I didn’t know what a baby looked like…?! Stupid Aonghas, stupid.

I was glad when Pauline came back from her break because at least she would know what she’s talking about. I thought my awkward/embarrassing episodes would be over – but just to top things off, I had one more awkward moment before I finished work. Pauline was talking to a lady with her young son about jeans or something, and they had gone to the back of the store to try them on. A short while later when Pauline was at the front of the store, I heard the lady call out from behind the curtain, “excuse me!” Seeing as I was closer, I walked up to the curtain and replied “yes?” She pulled back the curtain and the immediate look on her face was that of pure shock. She looked at me and said,

“Do you work here?!”

Something told me that she was expecting to see me. Well to be fair, I wasn’t expecting to see her half-dressed son standing there either.

Today wasn’t the first time I’ve worked at Cotton On Kids, but every other time I’ve worked there it’s always just been to cover for someone so that they could go to the toilet or take the banking. Working alone in a children’s clothes store for that long was definitely a new experience for me! I never knew children’s clothing could be so complicated to understand!