Retail Hell (16 page)

Lorraine was born an only child into a family that owned a successful warehousing business in Los Angeles. When she was in her twenties, her father died and she became responsible for her aging mother, who lived across the hall in their high-rise condo. After her father passed, Lorraine did what any good, strong-willed, big, tall, young girl with unpleasant looks would do.

She took over her father’s warehousing business.

One day Lorraine called me for an update on the status of my quest to find her a Nicole Miller silk blouse with playing cards on it in size XL because the size L that I had sold her was too small.

Her mood was feisty and dark as she began complaining about one of her managers. Moments later she blamed the entire male race (“Except for you, Frayman”) for all of her problems. She confessed that the men in the warehouse pissed her off continually and tried to take advantage of her because she was the boss. Apparently no other women worked in the Goldberg warehousing business. Lorraine was the only one.

Bingo! You don’t have to be Dr. Phil to see the writing on that bathroom wall. For me, being surrounded daily by a bunch of men in a warehouse would be a porno fantasy come true. For Lorraine, it ended up being the absorption of a lot of bad language.

At that moment I understood why she shopped so hard, buying boatloads of cosmetics, Nicole Miller silk blouses, and Italian shoes with bows on them.

They made her feel feminine.

Surprisingly, there were times when Lorraine could control her cocksucking and fucking and actually live up to her Jackie O dragqueen look. This usually happened when she met other people who had an air of importance or authority, like managers, buyers, or celebrities.

For instance, whenever she’d chat with Suzy Davis-Johnson on the aisle in front of handbags as she often did, Lorraine Goldberg transformed herself into a complete lady and became Big Fancy customer Royalty.

“I just absolutely
adore
the new Kate Spade handbag collection. They are stunning! Her most beautiful yet. I bought three of them from Frayman. I don’t know what I’d do without him. He calls me the minute something fabulous arrives! I just spent two thousand dollars!”

“I’m so happy to hear that, Lorraine,” Suzy would reply with a gleam in her eye, “We appreciate your business, and Freeman is certainly one of our best! You know, Lorraine, I’d love for you to have lunch in our restaurant on me.”

Lorraine would blush like a schoolgirl.

“Why, thank you so much, Suzy. That is so kind and thoughtful. I just
adore
this store. I don’t shop anywhere else. This is absolute heaven for me.”

Lorraine could play high society with the best of them, but there were times certain people or situations ruffle her scales, causing an eruption of the language gore that I love so much.

“I never want that fucking bitch girl at the Estée Lauder counter waiting on me again,” Lorraine barked one day. “She’s a little smart-mouthed, fucking asshole cocksucker! She can suck my dick, the little blond whore.”

“Lorraine, it’s okay,” I said, attempting to soothe her while trying to hold back the tears of laughter that would pour out of me later in the day, “You just call me and I’ll get your eyeliners.”

“It’s Free Gift time and I’m buying six eyeliners in cobalt and I expect to get three gifts. Can you get me the extra gifts? Sometimes they won’t give out extra gifts.”

“It’s okay. I’m friends with the manager, Melinda. She’ll give them to me.”

All Shoposaurus Carnotaurus types are hungry for free gifts, but Lorraine is never satisfied with one free gift. She wants as many as she can get her claws on.

“I’m buying five handbags and five wallets, I should get ten gifts!”

I’ve learned over the years to get Lorraine “extras” of anything that’s free. If the handbag department was giving away a gift-with-purchase necklace, or Fendi had a gift-with-purchase bath set with perfume, I would hoard as many as I could when no one was looking and then give them to Lorraine, telling her, “Don’t worry, I got you extras.” I always did whatever I could to make sure my Shoposaurus Carnotaurus was well fed.

Though Lorraine thrived on playing the part of high roller and spending as if she owned an oil well, her shopping expeditions were not always easy grab-and-buy situations.

Every item needed to be probed closely for flaws.

Lorraine would immediately reject any merchandise that had the slightest scratch, dent, or thread missing. If something was a little off, a little not quite right, a little shop-worn, Lorraine Goldberg, Shoposaurus Carnotaurus, roared louder than King Kong.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAH DO YOU SEE THAT?? THERE’S A CREASE ON THE BOTTOM OF THIS KATE SPADE HAND-BAG! I don’t want it. Take it away. Get me a new one!”

Yes, everything Lorraine bought needed to be pristine, in mint condition.

If I was able to fulfill her neurotic need for perfection by finding a brand-new Kate Spade in the stockroom that was still wrapped in the plastic and tissue it was shipped in, she glowed like a child about to unwrap a pile of birthday presents.

One time Lorraine dragged me to the Clarins Cosmetics counter to stock up on ten jars of foot-soothing cream during a Clarins free-gift promotion. She wanted enough cream to last her for five years. Or maybe it was for Mitzy’s paws.

The Clarins salesgirl, who looked like a timid ten-year-old, was completely astounded when Lorraine announced she was buying ten jars of foot-soothing cream. She quickly added that I was her personal shopper and I’d be ringing them up in handbags.

“You want ten jars?” the Clarins Girl said, her eyes growing wide.

“Did I stutter?” said Lorraine, all bitchy, “I want ten jars of foot-soothing lotion and four free gifts and gift bags.”

The Clarins Girl raised her brows over her wide eyes.

“We only give one free gift with a purchase of one hundred dollars or more. . . .”

I cut Clarins Girl off before Shoposaurus Carnotaurus bit her head off. “The four free gifts have already been approved by your manager, Melinda. Ms. Goldberg is one of The Big Fancy’s best customers, especially in cosmetics.”

No longer talking, the Clarins Girl quickly began putting stacks of boxed creams in a bag. Lorraine stopped her immediately, “Hold on a minute there, princess. I need to check every jar. I’ve had fuckin’ problems before. Some of these bitches have a sinkhole in the middle. They should be filled to the fuckin’ top, with a swirl.”

We all began opening jars of foot cream. To our amazement and disappointment, Lorraine was correct. Many of the jars had slight dips in the center.

“YOU SEE THAT!” Lorraine howled, “SINKHOLE! SINKHOLE! SINKHOLE!”

We opened twelve jars of soothing foot cream between the three of us. Only two passed inspection.

Lorraine found the first perfect one.

She fondled the jar as if it was a scientific wonder.

“You see,” she said softly, pointing her shiny red fingernail at the cream inside, “It has a fuckin’ swirl that peaks. There is no dip, no sinking. It’s completely fuckin’ full. All the rest of these are defective and should be sent back. Every single motherfucking one of them has a sinkhole! They’re all shit!”

Lorraine looked up at the girl while screwing the lid on the jar of foot-soothing cream that had passed inspection. “You need to go in the back and bring out more. Each one must be checked.”

The Clarins Girl jumped to the task, quickly realizing it was best not to anger a Shoposaurus.

“Absolutely. I’ll be just a moment, ma’am.”

“I know she thinks I’m a fuckin’ nut job,” Lorraine leaned in and said to me. “But if I’m buying ten jars of foot-soothing cream at sixty-five dollars each, every goddamn cocksucking jar had better be filled and have a perfect fuckin’ swirl at the top.”

“Right you are, Lorraine; I couldn’t agree more,” I said, chuckling at her lunacy.

Lorraine was correct in her assessment of what other people at The Big Fancy thought about her. They thought she was a nut job.

I had customers and fellow salespeople both exclaim, “How can you wait on that woman? She’s awful! She’s treating you so badly!”

I just smiled at them and replied, “Her bark is worse than her bite. She’s actually one of my best customers.”

Most didn’t know that sometimes Lorraine turned into a ferocious prehistoric beast with other salespeople just to entertain me because I found it wildly amusing.

Yes, I will burn in Retail Hell.

As the proud owner of one of the most ravenous Shoposaurus Carnotaurus in all of Los Angeles, I had no choice but to tame or be killed.

Several months after I started waiting on her, Lorraine and I had our Survival of the Fittest Death Match.

The showdown was about Spring Green bath towels.

I’d already sold her five of them. But because Lorraine
adored
the color and brand so much, she feared they would not last the next nuclear blast and panicked, wanting me to secure her five more.

They were sold out at all The Big Fancy stores, and the buyers refused to order just five towels. I hit a wall. No more Spring Green towels. Anywhere. And Lorraine would not let up. Her need for more Spring Green towels had gone beyond the level of shopping junkie. During a department rush one afternoon, she went full-on Shoposaurus Carnotaurus crazy over the phone as I watched Douche and Cammie ring up sales.

Lorraine screamed in my ear, “I’VE GOT TO HAVE THOSE FUCKING SPRING GREEN TOWELS YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE COCKSUCKER!”

That’s
it. No more.
I’ve
listened to this Shoposaurus Carnotaurus roar
long enough. Time to let
her
have it.

The foul mouth of Lorraine Goldberg began pouring out of me!

“You know what Lorraine,” I replied heatedly, “I am NOT one of your fucking asshole cocksuckers. It’s totally fucking busy in here and I’m losing sales listening to you bitch and moan about getting more stupid fucking Spring Green towels when you already have five. I’ve had enough of your shit! I can’t fucking take it any more! You OBNOXIOUS FUCKING BITCH! FUCK YOU!”

I hung up on her.

Shaking with anger, I retreated to the stockroom. At any second I expected a call from Suzy Davis-Johnson. I planned to tell Satan I could no longer wait on Lorraine. Enough was enough. I sat and medicated myself with Ruffles potato chips.

Then Cammie called on the stockroom phone.

“Lorraine’s calling and she’s really sorry. Talk to her. Give her a second chance,” she said, sounding like a marriage counselor.

Minutes later, Lorraine and I were back to normal. Shoposaurus and greedy Retail Slave.

“I’m sorry I called you a fucking asshole cocksucker,” she said.

“And I’m sorry I called you an obnoxious fucking bitch,” I replied.

After that pinnacle moment, Lorraine was in the palm of my hand and I could do no wrong. By confronting her in her own dirty-mouthed way, I’d won her over.

But the name-calling didn’t stop.

It transcended bitchiness and became our unique way of showing friendship for each other.

“Lorraine, you’re such a backward fucking whore!” I would say after watching her terrorize a new salesperson in the Kitchen Access department.

“Fuck you times two, Freeman, and get that deluxe Crock-Pot down off the shelf so I can see it better, you cocksucker,” she would respond, not even looking at me.

Having Lorraine Goldberg as my personal customer may have caused me perspiration, exhaustion, and agitation at times, but there was always a sale at the end.

Not only did she drag me all over the store, grabbing everything from bras to bedding, but she would buy duplicates of things she loved, sometimes spending thousands of dollars. I guess a lonely woman in her fifties with a successful warehouse business has a lot of extra cash to burn.

Another perk to being Lorraine’s little Retail Slave was that she rarely returned anything I sold her. This was a tremendous advantage because some of the other crazy customers The Big Fancy threw at me didn’t keep what they bought. There was nothing worse than being deep-fried by a lunatic shopper for several hours just to watch her return everything two days later.

The Big Fancy’s Once a Year Sale was Lorraine’s favorite time of the year. She’d call me on the phone, so excited it sounded as if she’d just won the lottery.

“FRAYMAN, FRAAAAAYMAN! I GOT THE SALE CATALOG! ARE YOU READY! I’VE GOT MY LIST! THERE’S A CRAPLOAD OF STUFF I WANT!”

Within minutes she’d dictate a list to me that was three scratch-pad pages long and included clothes, shoes, bedding and bath products, cosmetics, kitchen products, and, of course, handbags.

Though I was blessed by the retail gods to have my very own Shoposaurus spending so much without returning, helping her during a sale would nearly kill me when I went to retrieve those three pages of Big Fancy merchandise.

Countless phone calls turned my ears sweaty as she pondered what she wanted next: “I just
love
the royal blue blouse on page six, but on page seventeen they’re showing a similar blouse in cadet blue? What do you think? Should I get both? What’s the difference between royal and cadet, anyway? Why the FUCK are they showing two blouses so close in color?”

After scouring the catalog, Lorraine made several trips into the store. I’d drag merchandise out of one stockroom after another all over the store so she could preview all the sale merchandise from different departments. After hours of deliberation, Lorraine picked out enough sale crap to dress half the women at the Los Angeles Mission shelter.

Judy always got slightly aggravated with me because a large section of the handbag stockroom had to be cleared to accommodate the mountain of clothing, cosmetics, and shoes Lorraine wanted to have held till the sale, but what could she say? Nothing. It’s all for Lorraine Goldberg. One of Big Fancy’s high rollers. A friend of Suzy Davis-Johnson.

On sale day, Lorraine returned to the store in full-on Shoposaurus mode. She was ready to shop and thrilled out of her mind. “FRAAAAAAAAAYMAN! FRAAAAAAAAAYMAN! I’M HERE FOR THE ONCE A YEAR SALE! I’M READY TO BUY!”