It's Not All Roses: Burlington

Burlington Coat Factory is basically across the street from my new office.  It's been cold so I haven't taken that walk yet, but last week I had an eye appointment and had arrived early enough so I stopped on my way home.  I allowed about an hour of shopping time; there are other stores like TJ Maxx very close by, if I had enough time to shop.

I was still looking for passable women's shirts.  I found one that was perfect ~ only in an S.  I'm several letters away from that.  I also found a really pretty dress; they had a lot of similar dresses but this was the only one I really coveted.  It was available in M, which was still the wrong letter (but only off by one).

I looked at pants and found two dress pants, one black, one grey.  Both were passable but in addition to what you can see there's a couple of intangibles: crotch room and hip shape.  There has to be enough of the former and not too much of the latter.

It was try-on time.

Women's is downstairs; men's is upstairs so I had to go up to try on the slacks.  I found the dressing rooms.  I also found the dressing rooms lacking.  There was no place to sit, and no hooks on the wall. They had saloon-style doors (which means someone can easily look over while I'm in my undies).  I tried a few different rooms.  How can you have a dressing room with no place to put down your clothes? 

The only variation was, one door didn't even latch.  I gave up and figured returns are an option.  I still had over a half-hour before I had to leave.

I continued shopping.

I had those new breast forms that were smaller than my usual ones ~ probably a 38B instead of a C.  I went to the intimates department where I found the area flooded with 38C's (which I have enough of) but only one or two 38B's (which I didn't like).

I did find an article of shapewear I wanted to try and I picked that up too.

Checkout lines weren't very long but they were very disorganised and it seemed shoppers were incapable of buying just a few items.  Carts were full, and after several minutes of not moving, I had an idea: upstairs, when I (almost) tried on my clothes, there were more registers.

I headed up.

One register was open.  One person was in front of me and they just had a jacket.

But at the register was a woman buying men's sneakers for feet bigger than mine.  It seemed for each pair the customer had to pull out her drivers license which the clerk had trouble scanning or checking (even though she just did it).  Then she'd struggle to get the shoes in a bag.  Then she'd do the next pair.  There were still several pairs and I headed back down.

Now, lines were almost gone.  One woman seemed to be finishing up and I would be next.

Except there was a man standing near the register who had a couple of suits that looked as if they came out of the cleaners (bagged).  The clerk took him.

I figured he was waiting and I hadn't noticed him.  I was at my self-imposed leave time, but one person, two suits....

It took several minutes to check him out.  But I'm next!

A woman was standing behind the guy with the suits.  She had a cart full of who knows what.  It looked like she was stocking a garage sale.

I dropped the slacks and left.

In spite of finding exactly the hard-to-locate items I wanted, Burlington is off my list.

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