retail therapy

At the best of times I am a bad shopper and if shopping has anything to do with buying clothes or household things then I am hopeless at it.It begins with having to look respectable(shop assistants are a snobbish lot and will ignore you if they think you cant afford what they have to sell and that's judged by the way you dress) and most often than not the nightmare begins the moment one enters the shop.
The big retailers all have perfume counters at the entrance so the moment the doors open one is swamped by eager young men (not for a moment must one believe they are attracted to you...they are not) trying to sell the so called latest perfume from some fashion house or the other.brushing them off is rather difficult and no amount of arguing with them that the so called latest is last years range(remember some of us read the foreign fashion magazines)will brush them away.If all else fails prepare to be sprayed on by a dozen different fragrances and come out smelling like a flower shop or worse a tart.
When the successful escape has been engineered then the girls get at you.What erks me the most is that the girls have a nasty habit of peddling the anti wrinkle creams the moment they see me(yes i am on the wrong side of 40 but there is no need to rub it in literally).If i refuse they will go on to anti pigmentation creams,fairness creams etc.All I ever want is mascara or lipstick but they don't seem to think that someone my age may,just may want to bad an eyelash at some drop dead gorgeous hulk but well considering most women may be in denial about wrinkles,the girls do have a tough job ahead and chances are that the commissions on these products are the highest.
As one climbs the floors to the women's ware lot the experience can get more depressing.To begin with most shops today stock only the smallest of sizes,then of course the latest trend seems to be the balloon dress or the strapy number both of which can make the likes of me look like mutton dressed as lamb.So while the shop assistant will swear that the clothes look good on you the trick is to put it right back.Has anyone ever come across a shop assistant who actually tells you that something doesn't look good?.lets face it the poor girl will have an unhappy client on hand(no one wants to know the truth...that's the whole point of retail therapy) so in her own interests she had rather lie..
All in all retail therapy is no longer retail therapy so when depression or just sheer boredom overtakes,i head for the supermarket.The happy shelves of food can lift a sagging spirit and add to a sagging body too but the hours spent on food shopping is real retail therapy as far as i am concerned.