sales are not your friend

I'm very happy that the sale season is drawing to an end, and not solely because I work in retail. Yes, I'm aware that I've embarked on a savings project and should be embracing everything involving discounting and cost-cutting. But I hate sale time. Hate it.

Maybe it's a psychological thing, or an element of my suspicious nature, but I automatically assume if something has been discounted there's something wrong with it. Even if it's not a physical fault - tears, make up stains - there's a reason it's suddenly dropped in value by 20-50%.

It's on its way out. At the end of the season, the collections are being cleared to make way for the new, up-to-the minute styles, which are obviously better. The only reason it's been discounted is because nobody wanted it, so why should I?

Of course there are exceptions, (shoe-shaped ones), but the most heavily discounted items tend to be those which embodied key, designer-knock-off'd trends and certainly don't have a long and wearable life ahead of them.

Adding to my distaste is the fact that a lot of clearance sales aren't genuine. You won't often walk into the shop one day and see an item at full price reduced by 50% the next. More likely, it's been taken off the shelves or shunted off into a specially-marked "Non Sale Items" section for the duration of the clearance. In its place you'll find hangers and hangers of crap from the season before last, which the retailer still hasn't been able to move. I've worked in fashion retail and was horrified to see the cartons and cartons of old stock coming in the day before a sale starts.
Occasionally, you'll find a rare gem in this lot, but more often than not it's just piles and piles of no-longer-trendy crap that's been dug out of the warehouse and pretending to belong to the current collection. Yuck.

If, in an astonishing feat of good fortune, you do manage to stumble across a genuine clearance, you should still prepare to be disappointed. Fingering through the racks, you see that dress you always wanted but told yourself you could never afford. You find the price tag and gasp at the savings, feeling your heart get all a-flutter in excitement and anticipation.

Then you look at the sizes. They have 14s. Or 4s. What seems to be a buffet of exciting and colourful choices is really just the leftovers, and if you fall somewhere in the middle of the sizing scale, you're probably going to miss out. This is a particularly common problem towards the end of sale time, when the racks have been picked over and over by every enterprising young lass in the land.

If, by some miracle, you can actually find something that fits and isn't made from velour, you've entered a danger zone. Sales can induce a kind of hysteria that makes you spend a lot more than you normally would (again, the shoes). Things can be so cheap you can't justify not buying them, even though you don't really need them, and will regret it later when you get your credit card bill and want to cry.

Shopping during sale time is just not a pleasant experience. It means waiting patiently for the person next to you to move along the rack, tapping your foot somewhat impatiently while lining up for a changeroom behind a person with 25 different garments draped across every appendage, and fuming silently while waiting to pay behind someone (probably the same one from the changerooms) who wants to pay on seven different credit cards and start a lay-by.

Sale time means the shops will be disgusting with clothes strewn carelessly about and the most unhelpful and harried sales assistants you'll ever meet. (Not that you can blame them, when they've had to deal with customers like the one in front all day, every day.)

Sadly, sale time seems to last forever. Why the fuck do people brave the crowds on Boxing Day, when there are about four weeks of further reductions and newly shipped-in stock? You get sick of seeing the tables and tables of cheap junk cluttering the entrance of Myer or David Jones and you start to resent how much shop space last season's lines are taking up in your favourite boutiques.

It's a relief when the signs come down, the mess is cleaned up, and the uppity sales assistants return to their normal state of barely-disguised disdain when you ask for help.

Really, I'd just rather pay full price.
Which is maybe why I'm broke.