Her Misery Is Hand-Crafted

I work in a store that’s located inside another store, but I’m not employed by the big container store. Our location means that oftentimes we have customers in our store who did not know that our product exists and also don’t know they’re in another store.

We sell computer-controlled embroidery machines. While digitizing and arranging an embroidery design is undeniably an art, the actual process of stitching a premade design out is pretty easy: you press start on the machine, and then it sews on its own and you can go do something else. We keep at least one running because it gets people to come look at our store.

Because we go long periods of time without customers in our store, we are allowed to work on other things during our shifts, as long as customers come first.

A customer comes in with a shopping partner and sighs loudly. I immediately set down the skirt that I’m hemming by hand and stand up to help her.

Customer: “It’s all done by computers these days.”

She walks up to the machine that’s currently running and sighs again.

Customer: “No one cares for the old things like doing it by hand these days.”

She looks at one of our most expensive machines — to be fair, it’s VERY expensive, about the price of a car — and sighs a third time.

Customer: “People will spend so much money to not have to appreciate art these days.”

Me: “Hi, did you want help with anything?”

Customer: “No, not you. I want to talk to someone who appreciates real handcrafted art.”

My coworker holds up the poster-sized hand embroidery project she’s working on.

Coworker: “I can try to help you.”

The customer turns her back on us and turns back to her shopping partner.

Customer: “No one appreciates handmade things these days.”

Customer’s Partner: “Then get out of this store.” *To us* “I’m sorry about her, ladies. You have a good night.”