Shopping Flashback
This latest spate of shopping to update my wardrobe for work has me thinking about my Mom and her knack for finding bargains.
When we'd visit her prior to relocating here in the Sunshine state, Mom would plan for weeks ahead of time that we would visit her favorite department store, Burdine's, to grab a few things. The hunter/gatherer gene was in full force, because she was a pro at discovering the deals in the clearance racks. In fact, my closet still has a couple of items from my favorite brands that she'd scored on those trips.
Once the family lived here, we were made privvy to her other favorite place, the Beall's Outlet. She was happy to use her senior discount card and get an extra 10% off things that were already drastically reduced. She found some Le Creuset knockoff bakeware and once she'd made a cake in it and realized that it would work well, went back and got one for my kitchen.
Meanwhile, I saw their logo and it reminded me of the worst department store in the New York metropolitan area. Take a look:
Alexander's
Beall's (their outlets use a red logo, the full price stores blue)
In the seven years we've lived here, I had been in the Beall's Outlet more times with Mom before she passed than I'd been in their stores after-until recently. I never could pinpoint what it was, until I saw that logo on the wall tonight when I was in their store for the third time in two months.
Their logo looks like the low-rent Alexander's logo and I was having flashbacks to the period of time when Ed and I both were authorizations operators for a credit card company. It was a mind numbingly boring job, but the coworkers were nice and we ALL detested the authorizations calls from AL-73. None of the callers could give a merchant number and when you'd ask where they were calling from, would be answered with 'downstairs,' 'the shoe department,' 'Rego Park' or something that definitely was NOT a number. The rest of the call would go in the same fashion.
So yeah, flashbacks. They've kept me out of a store that just provided me with 5 pairs of pants, a pair of dressy Crocs and five shirts for work. All on sale.
Mom would be proud.
When we'd visit her prior to relocating here in the Sunshine state, Mom would plan for weeks ahead of time that we would visit her favorite department store, Burdine's, to grab a few things. The hunter/gatherer gene was in full force, because she was a pro at discovering the deals in the clearance racks. In fact, my closet still has a couple of items from my favorite brands that she'd scored on those trips.
Once the family lived here, we were made privvy to her other favorite place, the Beall's Outlet. She was happy to use her senior discount card and get an extra 10% off things that were already drastically reduced. She found some Le Creuset knockoff bakeware and once she'd made a cake in it and realized that it would work well, went back and got one for my kitchen.
Meanwhile, I saw their logo and it reminded me of the worst department store in the New York metropolitan area. Take a look:
Alexander's
Beall's (their outlets use a red logo, the full price stores blue)
In the seven years we've lived here, I had been in the Beall's Outlet more times with Mom before she passed than I'd been in their stores after-until recently. I never could pinpoint what it was, until I saw that logo on the wall tonight when I was in their store for the third time in two months.
Their logo looks like the low-rent Alexander's logo and I was having flashbacks to the period of time when Ed and I both were authorizations operators for a credit card company. It was a mind numbingly boring job, but the coworkers were nice and we ALL detested the authorizations calls from AL-73. None of the callers could give a merchant number and when you'd ask where they were calling from, would be answered with 'downstairs,' 'the shoe department,' 'Rego Park' or something that definitely was NOT a number. The rest of the call would go in the same fashion.
So yeah, flashbacks. They've kept me out of a store that just provided me with 5 pairs of pants, a pair of dressy Crocs and five shirts for work. All on sale.
Mom would be proud.
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