Fear & Loathing: Stereotyping

Each week, a PW staffer — who shall remain nameless, for many obvious reasons — shares her tales of working at Northeast Philadelphia’s shopping mecca, Franklin Mills.

Many of you commented on last week’s entry in the F-Mills saga, declaring that “Alan Shepard” was not the correct answer to the first man in space. Whoops! I had a conversation with [redacted] about it, and my feeling was that, although the answer was incorrect, the question was probably actually asking the name of the first American in space.

I mean, do American high school students really need to know that Baryshnikov was the first man in space?

Right. (You know, I don’t really see how knowing either is really all that important for graduating from high school, but I went to a fancy-pants all-boys prep school, so la dee dah.) But if that girl doesn’t pass the GED, whoops: The college graduates fail again. If you didn’t notice, the two major political parties ran candidates who went to freaking Yale last election, and look where that got us.

Anyway, our anonymous correspondent’s trials of working at America’s mile-long (or whatever) mall begin after the jump.

Besides selling crotchless panties to the Franklin Mills fatties, I also do the occasional shift selling infant clothing in a store owned by the same company. A few weeks ago while I was putting in some hours in baby land, I got to witness the grand opening of a new store.

Karma is a Native American-themed store (duh) that sells a lot of turquoise jewelry and some carved animals and other stuff that you would stereotypically associate with the Native American culture. There’s even a few totem poles in the front window and a life-size wooden Native American dude by the entrance; some of my co-workers have dubbed him “Chief Ghetto Fab.” What makes Karma especially awesome, though, has absolutely nothing to with Native Americans. In the front of the store, they have an entire display where you can make your own sand art. And not just any sand art. Edible sand art. Sandy candy, if you will.

On the first day of business over at Karma, I was curious to see what kind of shoppers would frequent the store. I learned that afternoon, it is a special brand of Franklin Mills customer who would enjoy this new establishment.

As I stood there staring at Karma for all eight hours of my shift, I saw not one, not two, not three, but four different individuals walk past the store, notice the Native American theme and then proceed to smack one hand over their mouths while making a “wawawa” noise and move the other hand behind their head to form pseudo-feathers.

Two of them did rain dances.