With the combination of booze and escalators, the singles mixer at the mall very quickly got out of hand....

Retail sector spend suffered substantial shrinkage during the recent recession. Redundancies were inevitable however some employees weathered the cull. To survive, these attractive, personable point-of-sellers had to evolve into a new breed of sales assistant. Up-selling, cross-selling, incentivising, indebting – all mechanisms to extract as much cash as possible under the guise of excessive friendliness.

I visited a mall to purchase some boardshorts. Sounds straightforward. 1) Find a skateboard shop, 2) Browse boardshorts, 3) Find desirable size and colour, 4) Try on, and 5) Purchase. A shop called Buckle immediately appeared to satisfy steps 1) – 3). Whilst browsing, a sales assistant half my age resembling Jesse Metcalfe accosted me with “Hey man, what size are you?”. “What size do you think I am?” I retorted. Always best to answer a question with a question. Jesse ignored my witty repartee and proceeded to describe the Phantom boardshorts – apparently being fabricated from recycled boat sails or dolphin hide justifies the price tag.

I picked a selection to try on and after ironically introducing himself as Jesse and a half-hearted handshake, I found myself in the changing room. Wrestling myself into the unnaturally slippery Phantoms, Jesse checked on me and slid two pairs of $50 flip-flops under and placed three $40 T-shirts on top of the door as he felt these would “go really well with the shorts”. Thus began my incarceration – Jesse must have brought applicable sizes of every item in the shop for me to try. I escaped the claustrophobia of the fitting room when he started bringing girl styles (“it’s a modern world – you could probably get away with a size 8″). I returned to the boardshorts to hear a cute female assistant tell a male customer “I’m bored so I’m going to find you the perfect outfit. Time to play dress-up”. Why did I have to get stuck with Jesse? Ultimately I ended up with no boardshorts but three new T-shirts, two of which were from the men’s aisle.