You Can’t Kiss And Make Up For This Makeup

In my teens, there is a drugstore situated in a small shopping center at the edge of our neighborhood. I go there to grab something and just happened to pass the makeup aisle. This drugstore is pretty large, so their makeup selection is also huge, with just about every brand you can think of, taking up one entire wall of the building.

I have just rounded the corner when I see this woman sitting on the ground. In the time it takes to process what I am seeing, a manager storms around the opposite corner and makes a beeline for this woman. He stops, arms crossed.

Manager: “Ma’am… I hope you know that you have to pay for those.”

Customer: “What?”

Manager: “The makeup, all those packages you’ve opened. You have to pay for them.”

He gestures roughly toward where I am standing, still at the opposite end of the aisle from them. I look down and see what he was pointing at: the pressed powder compacts. She has opened one of each shade, ranging from ivory to warm beige, and left the remains in piles at the bottom of each display. That’s right. I said “each.” She has gone through every single brand and opened one of each of every single color on that spectrum of packaged compacts.

To make it worse, each brand makes more than one type of pressed powder. I repeat: she has opened one of EACH.

Customer: *Agitated* “What do you mean? I don’t understand. Why do I have to pay for them when I only need one?”

Manager: *Nearly having a stroke* “Because you destroyed them?! And because you used them. We can no longer sell these to anyone else because they’ve been contaminated. By. You.“

The customer becomes irate and responds in a “duh” tone of voice.

Customer: “Well, I needed to test them to match my skintone!”

I realize that next to all the compacts are the used makeup sponges that come with them, as well as what appears to be used baby wipes.

Manager: *About to have an aneurism* “Well, I hope it was worth all the money you now owe us!”

The customer, apparently realizing that things had gotten serious, began panic-crying and refusing to pay. I would like to establish that this was a full-grown woman, maybe in her mid-thirties, and she had very clearly been handed everything in life.

She argued repeatedly that she needed to test them to find the right shade and that she shouldn’t be required to pay for something that doesn’t match.

The manager repeatedly informed her that he didn’t give a fraction of a rat’s behind whether or not she WANTED what she had used, she WAS going to pay for them all, right now, or the cops were going to be called.

I had to leave at that point, so I didn’t get to see the outcome, but I did a little math when I got home. This was years ago, and the compacts cost between $5 and $6 each at the time. (They now cost two or more times that.) At the end of her little rampage through the makeup section, she would have had to pay for somewhere between $250 and $300 worth of products.