I love working at Victoria's Secret.
It's true. Our entire team of workers are amazingly hard workers and are super kind. Even though some days can be better than others, work always seems to be fun. Specifically, the customers who come in can turn an average shift into a memorable day. Some of their stories, questions or reasons for buying a particular piece of lingerie can oftentimes be extremely interesting.
For instance, just today a pair of ladies were "just looking" around in the beauty section. This was a great chance for me to show them our new "Life is Pink" fragrances. After their initial thoughts on the perfumes, one of the ladies opened up and told me her 15 year old sister just lost the battle against leukemia yesterday. It was apparent that them "just looking around" was really a way for them to get her sister off of her mind. The two ladies opened up and told me the entire sequence of events from her father calling her while she was driving on I-205, informing her of the news, to her telling her younger brother that night.
Working at Victoria's Secret has this magical effect of allowing people to open up. Maybe it's because some people think underwear and lingerie are
forbidden to talk about in a public setting (even though most people wear it), or maybe it's because our particular location has all women working there, so it automatically seems like some sort of club for women, but some people come in and are very open from the get-go.
During early January, a tall, quiet woman in her early 40s came up to me and asked where she could find a "baby-making outfit." Yes, I may work at Victoria's Secret where we sell a lot of sexy lingerie, but that still took me by surprise. For some reason I don't see these under pieces as
soley sexy, naughty pieces. We also sell casual, every-day underwear! After showing her a sexy babydoll, I couldn't help but wonder how her husband would end up liking it. Not to sound perverted, but it's interesting to think that I'm helping her in surprising her husband. Many of the male shoppers, too. Though male shoppers aren't as frequent, it's always interesting to help them out because you try to get the
right gift for their significant other. It's odd to think that I'm helping pick out the lingerie that their girlfriends and wives will be wearing.
But I digress. Last week a lady came in and bought one pair of white, seamless panties. I asked if she wanted to get a matching bra for it, but she told me she was taking part in a fundraiser for the Portland Art Museum where she was getting body-painted as Monet's
Water Lillies, aka her work was paying for this and wouldn't approve of a bra (since she was going to be bare on top). How cool is that? This fundraiser happened to be a ball where the attendees dressed in their finest gowns and decorative masks, and ate and drank. All proceeds went to the art museum. This of course sounded like something I'd be interested in going to, until this woman told me the ticket prices - $125. If I had an extra $125 laying around, I would've gone.
That's another thing I like about working at VS - there's such a diverse crowd of customers. We have everyone from people scraping by to people who have no problem with spending $400 in one transaction shop there. In fact, just this past week a man came in and bought a ton of gifts for his wife. Though they were obvious Valentine's gifts, I asked anyway. He smiled and showed me the other bags he was carrying from Juicy Couture and Bebe,
"these too!" he exclaimed.
My favorite aspect of working at VS has to be helping people find their next fragrance. For some reason the beauty section just calls to me - I feel at home showing people our fragrances, whether it's our newest, our most loved, or my personal favorites. As you can probably tell, I'm a perfume person. François Demachy once said "perfume helps embellish the skin, but it's not an accessory; it's something entirely different, it's very profound." Perfume to me is the most personal part of a person. Instantly it tells what you like - warm, fresh, fruity, floral, woody, musky. What makes it even more personal is how it reacts with each person's skin - how perfume smells on one person can be completely different on the next. Christian Dior once said "a woman's perfume tells more about her than her handwriting." While showing people a single perfume in our store, I can instantly take them to something they'll like as well or if they scrunch up their nose and wave their hand in front of their face, I'll take them to something else, usually a perfume that's the polar opposite of it. If one woman doesn't like a warm scent, I'll show her something refreshing and clean, and visa versa - not rocket science, I know.
Coco Chanel had an interesting thing to say about perfume - "a woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future."
What are you thoughts?
