I had the day to kill in Brighton between my two gigs here (a great gig at the Pavillion last night- thanks to all of those of you who came) and was looking for a new jacket in a clothes shop. I tried on a leather coat which was labelled 46 and was surprised to find that it nowhere near fitted me. I knew I had put on a little weight thanks to the various stresses of the last month, but hadn't realised it had been quite so bad. There was another jacket the same on the rack next to the one I had failed to get into. I checked the size, it was a 48. Surely I could get that on, though if truth be told the 46 had been some way off fitting. I started to take it off the rack. Suddenly the slightly sneery voice of the assistant chimed in, "I'll save you the humiliation. That's a 38. It's not going to fit you."
"No, it says 48," I said.
"It's a 38 in Uk sizes sir. Really, I didn't want to have to see you struggling into it."
I made some comment that that was a relief as I had hoped I hadn't got that fat, but actually felt slightly embarrassed to have been spoken to in this way. There were certainly nicer and more tactful ways to get through this problem. Possibly just letting me try on the jacket and not pass comment (I would surely find it didn't fit), but to be sneered and laughed at in this way was a little hurtful and possibly not the most efficient way for a clothes salesman to operate. I haven't been so offended since a certain check-out girl said "Someone Likes Yoghurt".
And if he was going to point out that I was too big for the selected jacket, it might at least have been good practice to direct me to some coats that I might be able to squeeze my hefty bulk into, but the man just made his comments and disappeared elsewhere in the store.
I wasn't too crest-fallen, but now felt too self-conscious to try on any other clothes in case the sizes they said they were were deliberatlye wrong and I might get laughed at again.
Later I realised I was being sensitive. I hadn't found any other shops that I liked and I really needed a new jacket so I headed back into the shop, hoping the man would have forgotten all about it in the hour or so that had passed. But he saw me enter and said, "Come back to try on that much too small jacket again?" and laughed.
"No," I said coldly. I considered for a second adding, "And you know, if you want to sell clothes to people, you're probably better off not making light of their physical appearance or saying stuff that's likely to make them feel self-conscious, but you know, if you don't care about selling stuff then carry on with your hilarious and unwanted observations."
But instead I just pointedly walked out of the shop, never to return.
