Hair today and other bad puns…

There’s something about selling health and beauty products that brings you a lot closer to the personal lives of strangers than you’d often like to be. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have ambled through the supermarket or the drugstore, eying up strange things like teething powders, feminine wipes and facial hair removers that seem to be made out of fine grade sandpaper and wondered idly who actually buys these things.

I know! I know who buys them, and who uses them, and there’s something horribly wrong about selling products that promise to banish embarrassing odours to one of your colleagues. Ahem.

Hair dye for men was one I always used to laugh at. Hair dye for men comes in boxes with gruffly refined chaps on the box, the same guys who pose for male order catalogues in bathrobes and those pyjamas that look a little (but not much) like karate suits. I presume the concept behind this kind of nightwear for men is that if you’re a lucky girl, your fella will ninja his way into the bedroom and then thrill you with all manner of Jet Li-inspired high jinks. Bizarrely, the men that buy male hair dye all look as if they might own a pair of said PJs. If you don’t believe me, look here.

Apparently hair dye for men isn’t designed to draw attention to your hair (unlike its feminine counterpart): its intention is to make you look your ‘natural best’. I don’t believe this at all. I had a guy in his sixties last week with SIX boxes of a shade of blonde never seen in nature – there was a slight hint of apricot in it. My customer had obviously used it before, and his hair was clearly very white underneath, and the overall effect was oddly chalky. I was impressed with his attempts to stockpile it although I did wish I could tell him he’s look a lot better if he didn’t bother. Blonde on men is a weird concept – over the age of about twenty-five I find it oddly disturbing; you only have to look at Boris Johnson or Jimmy Saville to see what I mean. There’s something really creepy about it. Apparently Hollywood dislikes blonde men and often casts them as muggers and murderers. I went hunting around to try and find more facts to back this up but suddenly found myself on a white supremacy forum. Inevitably the commenters there were terribly confused although one did point out that ‘without blonde men there wouldn’t be any blonde women.’ Bless.

Oh dear, I’ve rambled off at a tangent. What we were talking about? Oh yes, hair dye for men. It’s not just for head hair, you know – you can get it for your ‘tache and sidies, too  although having seen Tom Jones of the cover of the Guardian’s Weekend magazine a few weeks ago I have no idea why anyone would want to do this to themselves because it just looks strange. And if you think it looks strange on celebrities – who, let’s face it, mostly seem to derive great pleasure from making themselves look as mutated and alien as possible – imagine how very peculiar it looks on a 5’2″ old man who dresses like a farmer who’s come up to town for a day trip. I just hope he had the sense to check out the Just For Men FAQs beforehand. (Q: Can I perm my hair whilst using Just For Men? A: Yes, just wait seven days after colouring).

And if you think hair dye for men is weird, what about Grecian? I always thought it was just another hair colour for men, but not so! The images on the box suggest a graceful transformation from distinguished grey back to a truly virile dark brown – but it’s not a dye, honest! You have to comb it through the hair every night. I know this because my colleague (yes, the one who bought the vagina wash, if you must know) told me she had to do it to her husband, for a whole fifteen minutes at a time. I have no idea how this stuff works (the box weaves alchemical yarns about restoring melanin but it sounds a bit hokey to me) but I feel a clue lies in the strict instructions not to wash your hair too often. This stuff isn’t hair dye – it’s hair PAINT!

Phew. I’m glad I’m not a man. For lots of reasons, obviously, but mostly because dyeing your hair is OK if you’re a girl, whereas unless you’re a bloke who’s teenage emo there will never ever be anything OK about it at all.

I beg your pardon?

As we all know, talking to the customers is one of my favourite things about the job. No sooner had I arrived on the shop floor this afternoon then I was accosted by an elderly lady who was pondering what the new lavender floor cleaner might smell like.

‘I think this one’s lavender scented, ‘ I offered helpfully.

She wasn’t convinced, so in the end I wrestled with the childproof lid and we both had a good sniff. It certainly wasn’t conjuring up the fields of Provence for me. Old lady reckoned it smelled like a public lavatory. I didn’t like to make the obvious connection between cleaning products and municipal toilets because, well, as old ladies go, this one was quite scary. She wasn’t one of your nice headscarf-and-tartan-shopping-bag old ladies, she was one of the modern sort who wear glasses with chunky coloured frames and wear those big blanket wrap things flung around themselves. She also had a flowery patterned walking stick. The ones with the fancy sticks are always the most demanding.

Next up she found some natural window cleaner. It’s called ‘Vinegar Window Cleaner.’ We chatted for a few minutes about the multitude of domestic chores vinegar can be used for . Then she asked me if I knew what it smelled like. I told her – honestly – that I hadn’t sampled it but could make a pretty good guess.

The lid to the bottle incorporated a spray mechanism, so it was a bit tricky getting it off whilst avoiding dripping the stuff all over my trousers. She stuck her nose right into the opening.

‘Urgh!’ she shrieked. ‘It smells LIKE VINEGAR!’

Take a deep breath; smile. Attempt to get the top back on  bottle without dripping stinking vinegar product all over trousers.

By the time I’d sorted it out she was over by the Cif.

‘Do you know why they changed the name from ‘Jif’ to ‘Cif’?’ (She’s pronouncing it ‘Kif’, by the way, not ‘Sif’)

‘As far as I know it was changed to bring it into line with the rest of Europe, where it’s always been known as ‘Cif”?

She pooh-poohed this idea.

‘Nooo. Nooo…’ (At this point she’s looking at me like I’m a bit simple and dreadfully ill-informed). ‘They had to change it because abroad, Jif’s the name for a gay man.’

She had no idea where exactly this might’ve been the case, and was incredibly contemptuous of the fact that I didn’t know this. She was also really enjoying using the phrase ‘gay man’, too. Every time she said it she had a quick peek around to see if anyone had noticed she’d said it. And you know, she was so convincing that I had to come online and check when I got home this evening. Sadly I have yet to find any evidence of these mysterious Continental Jifs. But my scary old lady was so convincing, so adamant, I reckon it could be my Google-fu that’s at fault, and that they’re out there somewhere.

topped up and ticked off

Let me make this clear: I’m not asking you if you want to buy mobile phone top up because I’m kind and caring, because I’m worried that you might miss the last bus home and need to ring your spouse to tell them to pick up the kids before the nursery school staff hand over your precious babies to Social Services and you are forever branded an unfit parent. Neither do I care that that guy or that girl who might just be The One might send you a text message any minute now inviting you on what could very well be a hot date, and that without credit you won’t be able to reply thereby destroying the visions of love and marriage that have been festering in your head ever since you spied him or her across a crowded room.

No – I’m asking you if you want mobile phone top-up because it’s my job. My boss tallies up all the figures and whoever sells the most top-up gets a cake. That’s right: a cake. And that’s a cake Lady Boss buys out of her own pocket, not a special corporate cake that’s delivered by a Playboy Bunny singing cake songs and doing the cakewalk. In fact, thinking about it, I won the cake a fortnight ago and I’m still waiting for it. But that’s OK: I don’t really do it for the cake, although for the record, I’m a custard slice girl.

If you don’t want to buy any top-up, that’s fine. You can just say. ‘No thanks,’ or ‘Not today,’ or tell me you’re on contract if you really feel like sharing; you don’t need to shout that you have NEVER owned a mobile phone, you have NEVER used one and you NEVER intend to.

That came as quite a shock. You were  very much the school-marmish retired gentlewoman type, brooched, buttoned up and sensibly shod. Who would have guessed such hatred for modern technology was churning within you? No, I don’t work on commission – like I already said, there’s a cake up for grabs; that’s all. I’m sorry that you’re thoroughly fed up with being asked where ever you go.

I gave up second guessing which of my punters would want credit because frankly I was very bad at it. You’re wearing a hoody, you’re buying a can of that chocolate man Lynx, you’re chewing gum (with your mouth open) – of course you want some top up.

Only you don’t.

Damn. I had you down as a T-Mobile customer, for sure.

Aha!

Here comes a nice old lady. Lots of my customers are nice old ladies. We sell lots of the things old ladies buy, like Covonia and Euthymol Toothpaste and hot water bottles. Not many old ladies buy phone top-up, but nevertheless, I will ask her. I must ask everyone, because I’m not particularly psychic and more to the point, I want that cake.Here we go:

‘…and would you like any phone top-up today?’

Really. We all know what the answer’s going to be, don’t we? And no, she doesn’t want any top-up.

But she’s smiling and she’s thanking me for asking her  just because she’s old. And then she tells me about an article in The Times that she’s read, that says that actually there are plenty of old people who use the internet and have mobile phones, and that she’s so happy that I didn’t discriminate against her.

And suddenly that cake doesn’t matter so much after all.