In Suits, however, there was an expectation for employees to dress up. When I worked in the home department, no one cared if I showed up in skinny jeans and my favorite Cyndi Lauper T-shirt. It wasn’t her blatant homophobia that irritated me, but that she’d thought we had it in common. Still, though things eventually returned to semi-normal, I privately couldn’t get over the fact that she’d even felt comfortable speaking to me that way to begin with. Nasty was hardly the worst thing gay people had been called, and I wanted to move on. “You’re good,” I told her when she started bringing me home-baked sweets, and I said it again every time she tried to have a conversation about how much she enjoyed the Ellen show.
I was wearing the outfit I specifically put on when I wanted judgmental old Catholic ladies to think I was. Obviously Yolanda thought I was straight. Maybe it was because she reminded me of my mother, who worked at Starbucks and would have been ruined if she lost her job and the health insurance that came with it, that I didn’t.īut after that, I kept Yolanda at a distance. “You and me both know that’s not what you meant,” I pressed on. “What? Why is that nasty?” I asked, feeling suddenly defensive, my heart racing, and before I could wimp out I added, “I’m gay.” I didn’t realize she’d been watching them too. Gross, I thought, the same as I did whenever I saw my parents kiss as a child. The kind of kiss that happens a few years into a relationship, as automatic as double-checking the front door is locked after leaving your house. They stopped to admire some ties fanned out on a display table, and as they stood there deciding on a color, one of the men leaned over and kissed the other on the lips. Yolanda and I were folding shirts behind the register when a gay couple wandered into our section. I didn’t read too much into it and assumed she was referring to the fact that I was still new and awkward, but then, a week later, something happened that made me see her words in a different light. “You probably don’t like doing this part anyway.” ) Yolanda snatched the tape from my hand and shooed me away from our frazzled customer. (Okay, no one was actually choked, though after I discovered a shopper had pooped in the dressing room, I did have my fantasies. I’d been in the middle of measuring a man’s neck when she saw the sloppy choking system I’d improvised. Usually I worked Suits alone, but this Saturday Yolanda was with me for extra support. I knew right away we would get along: She sounded exactly like my mother. The first time I saw her, she was picking up shirts some rowdy teenagers had scattered all over the floor, huffing and puffing about how no one ever helped her, how exhausted she was from her other job at a bank, how no one appreciated her. Because of a spinal disability that caused her to be perpetually hunched over, she was in a near-constant state of pain that was only exacerbated by our customers.
Yolanda was a short, bitter Puerto Rican woman who’d been in the suits department forever and who I immediately felt kinship to as a short, bitter Puerto Rican myself. Or so I thought, until one busy afternoon when I was on the clock with Yolanda. I wasn’t sure if that’s how real tailors who worked in stores that didn’t sell microwaves did it, but my way worked fine enough. The majority of men were happy to let me eyeball them, but on the rare occasion they wanted to be measured, I’d wrap the tape around their throats tightly and add an inch to the number so they’d have room to breathe. Aside from fabric choices that ranged from silk to cotton to sweat-resistant, wrinkle-proof polyester, there were the sizes, which were taped onto the front pocket of each shirt.
It wasn’t as simple as small, medium, and large. “Um, what shirt do you suggest?” they often asked, bewildered by all the options we offered. She simply handed me some measuring tape, then sent me off.įortunately, it turned out most of my customers were equally as unprepared as me. Other than a five-minute video I watched on a company iPhone, I wasn’t given any real training. Though I was hired in the home department-hawking Martha Stewart–branded knives to suburban moms who called me dear -about a month after I started, my manager promoted me to the men’s suits section. My favorite part about working at JCPenney was getting to choke men.