Things I learnt from...the sweet old man in a hat

I’m going to warn you…this story isn’t a complaint about retail.

I know!! What has happened to the editorial policy of rant now and think of the repercussions later?

There is an extremely valid reason for this, I had a nice customer once…and they taught me a valuable lesson.

Last year, there was an old man walking around the store. I approached him because, a) he looked really sweet, b) he was wearing a hat and c) he looked a little lost. Upon enquiring what he was after I learnt he was in the market for a leather jacket. I was a little puzzled…and I think my faced showed it.

He went on to tell me that on his eightieth birthday he wrote a bucket list and owning a leather jacket was something he needed to cross off. This had the journalist in me intrigued…

“Why do you want to have owned a leather jacket?” I asked.

“Well,” he began, “when I was a young boy, like yourself (I’m not kidding…this is all a quote), I saw pictures of James Dean in the leather jacket in that movie and I always thought how cool he looked.”

I love that movie…and now I loved the old man.

“Why haven’t you owned one then?”

“Well, I never felt it was appropriate for me to own one, or the right time. Years went by, and one day I realised I had never owned one. I felt disappointed.”

At this point, the old man was tugging at my heart. Off we set on an hour journey around the floor looking at leather jackets; during that time he told me about his life and his family. He was lovely…I think I have an elderly crush. We eventually found one and the look on his face was that of pure joy. I wanted to hug him…probably not appropriate.

As he was about to leave he asked me if I had a leather jacket. I told him I had not. At that point, he took my arm and said…

“Promise me you’ll get one while you are still young enough to enjoy it?”

I agreed. It isn’t really my style, but the man was so sweet and the whole tone of our journey together was that of living life to the fullest. Leather goods might be trivial to some, but to this man they stood for so much more; for that reason, I will buy a leather jacket.

Things I learnt from…the maintenance man

Working in retail you spend a lot of time talking to people and in the myriad of conversations you have daily, you manage to learn a few things.

A few months ago, a maintenance man was working out the back near our computer. I learnt far more than I probably wanted to in our 20-minute exchange.

You see it was the day before he went on leave and I was asking what he was doing during his time away. It was not what I was expecting.

He was going overseas for a couple of weeks, which sounds normal enough…I can assure you it wasn’t that simple. The destination was Thailand and he was going, to put it delicately, to gain the company of women.

I was taught that you can walk in to any bar in the town he was visiting and the women were lined up on a stage in the middle of the bar and that you could pick a women to spend time with. What that entailed I’m not 100% sure as I wasn’t really interested in asking many questions.

What the hell could have I learnt from this exchange?

Call me naïve, but I didn’t realise that people still treated women like a commodity. I just don’t understand how or why you would involve yourself in that, but I learnt that people do. At the risk of sounding sanctimonious, I think that they don’t realise that the women they are “purchasing” for their holiday are so poor that they are willing to do that and that they would, most likely, rather be working in a different field.

I understand some people may choose this as a career, and by no way am I judging it. I am uncomfortable with, what I believe, a lack of choice for that career. If the ladies in those bars were working there of their own free will, I don’t have an issue.

I don’t think the maintenance man realised I had no interest in his holiday and was repulsed by his, I don’t believe intentional, attitude towards women. I learnt I could fake interest quite successfully…convenient for a journo.