Not Quite the Tag I wanted
Last week, I found the gilet of my dreams. Why was I dreaming of gilets? Well, Lockdown 2.0 was not proving as interesting as its predecessor. My mind was at as loose an end as Donald Trump out on the golf course in Virginia.
Besides, I’d been pretty good about shopping online for a time now. If you ignore my wool cravings, that is. The itch was building up.
And I could blame the weather all I liked, but my walks were not happening. A new gilet would surely tempt me to step out? I’m quite talented like that. At making the leap from whim to need, I mean.
And this gilet was truly lovely. The colour of a well-aged claret. Plus a hood to protect my precious headphones in a sudden shower. And buttons on the pockets to prevent my stuff falling out.
Diversion… It has always been a mystery to me why women’s clothes have so few places to, well, store stuff. Men’s clothes hit the sweet spot. Women’s? Maybe a shallow pocket if you were lucky. You know, the kind of pocket that tumbles out its contents the moment you bend.
To ice the cake, the gilet was less than half its regular price. I radiated virtue as I pressed ‘Pay Now’. I was doing a good deed. What could go wrong?
Plenty. As I discovered soon enough. In fact, the very next week, when I went grocery shopping. In my new gilet.
I was hoisting my rather heavy backpack onto my back as I walked out of the supermarket when the alarm began beeping as if announcing lockdown. How could that be? We were already in lockdown.
The security guard checked my shopping, gingerly keeping his distance. No contraband there. He cautiously bent towards me with his wand. ‘It’s coming from your neck,’ he said, obviously wondering whether I’d tucked away a string of sausages there. I took off my brand-new gilet, and there – the security tag was still on!
Frantic explanations followed. I jabbed away at my phone to fetch up the email receipt that might prove I was not a shoplifter. Murphy’s law or just plain MJ karma: the phone’s mobile data was also in lockdown.
The guard had watched my contortions with great fascination at first. Especially as he’d ascertained the gilet was not from his store. But an impatient queue was building up behind me. ‘You might want to get that off then, love,’ he said finally.
I went in search of the culprit store. It was closed. Of course. But I needed to offload. Both the beeping alarm experience and the tag on my neck. Desperate times… I walked into the first store I found open. Except that it was a pharmacy. Which probably did not contain anything that was tagged. Except me right then. I stoically made my way to the counter.
‘I have a bit of a peculiar problem,’ I explained haltingly. Try explaining why you need a security tag taken off something you’re wearing and you’ll get why several halts were required. The girl shook her head at me in disbelief from a safe distance.
Yesterday, I went in search of the real store. The girl at the counter there also looked at me in disbelief. As she finally yanked off the tag, she said, ‘You know, that has never happened before. There’s never ever a security tag on an online purchase.’
I know, love. But this is me, these things only ever happen to me.
