Each with a Purpose

I work at a glove store. Most people would assume this to be one of the most boring jobs on the planet. Heck, most people probably don’t realise there are stores that only sell gloves, they just get them at any department store or mall. But America is a big place and consumerism is a big part of it. And as such there’s a store that only sells one kind of product for virtually every product under the sun. But i work at a glove store selling gloves most days a week. We get an expectable number of customers, maybe a few more due to us being on a main road, and they each only ever come in maybe twice before we never see them again. As boring as the premises sounds i actually enjoy working here because I, like all people who work in retail, have found ways to make the days more manageable.

You see, selling gloves isn’t what enjoy about working here. I enjoy the people I’m selling the gloves to. They each have their own reasons for buying gloves and each pair sold is a story hidden in plain sight. Sure, there are some people who just buy gloves for garden work or some other form of laborious task that takes its toll on the hands, but there are also the people who buy a specific pair of gloves for a specific reason. It’s these people who make my days pleasant. We sell so many different gloves all varying in style, color, size and so on and with variety comes individuality. My boss sometimes says “every pair of gloves is created equal.” I never really understood what she says but it inspired my own little phrase; “every pair of gloves is created for a purpose.” With this in mind I always try to devise the purpose of each pair I sell.

Each with a Purpose

One pair was a smooth, silky white with long cuffs that came about a quarter of the way up the forearm was sold to a surprisingly finely dressed woman with a purse to match her outfit. She paid in cash and put the gloves on as she was leaving the store in a very orderly fashion. I thought that she must have been on her way to a ball of some sort. Her dismissive nature towards me, a humble store clerk, made me think that she had a slight superiority complex but the fact she came into our store instead of getting gloves with her outfit meant she wasn’t as high and mighty as she thought she was. She was probably going to the event to woo a duke or a baron so that she might marry into a higher social standing like some evil stepmother.

I have these thoughts for every customer. It makes my job quite enjoyable. Maybe one day i’ll buy a pair of gloves for myself. I wonder what their purpose will be. What will they say about me?