Monday, January 23, 2012

High Society

If you search "Harrods" on Google, the first available link is entitled: "Harrods: Luxury Beauty and Fragrance." This is the sort of reputation I was aware of before my venture to this glorified department store. In preparation for the event, I dressed in my finest clothes (the only really nice things I brought with me to London): a sweater dress I recently wore to my cousin's wedding and a posh pair of boots.

I looked good. (Trust me, I'm not being vain. I am allowed to claim such things when I'm in desperate need of a saving grace in the following situation).


I arrived at Harrods before my friends, having gone there straight from class. My trip to the tube station had been hindered by my shoes--only I would think to bring open-toed suede boots to a cold, wet climate--and now that I was inside and dry, I had the time to wander about solo for about twenty minutes. Immediately salespeople dressed in black preyed upon me, but I graciously declined their attentions on the grounds of "browsing before buying." Those poor souls had no idea I had little more than three pound twenty in my purse.

Once my friends arrived, I traded the attentions of cash-thirsty salespeople for that of my guy friends, who until then had only seen me in jeans and sneakers. Together we sought out the most expensive item we could find, which ended up (quite lamely in my opinion) to be a fancy watch. Seriously? In a store where you can buy George Washington's signature or an original Picasso painting, they're demanding more money for a time keeper, rendered superfluous in a world dominated by cellphones.

Strangely enough, when you're surrounded by crazy expensive luxury items, it's easy to find yourself saying, "That's a great [watch] face, but I'd never pay for it if that's the band that comes with it," or "I'd be happy to buy this imitation Harry Potter chess set, but the board looks plastic and cheap." How quickly our thresholds for quality are stretched. Yet among all these upper-class thoughts, the one that kept running through my mind was, "Don't they have a place for poor people to sit?"

By "poor people," I meant "me."

Because by this point my feet were beginning to hurt. In addition to my shoes being impractical as all-weather footwear, they are by no means comfortable. In short bursts of standing/walking, I can handle it; they're a little snug. After two and a half hours of standing/walking, aches and pangs ensue. Your feet start spontaneously expanding, causing them to throb against the boot's boundaries.

Normally in these situations, there's somewhere I can sit for a short while--a bench, a spare chair. If worse comes to worse a toilet. In Harrods, the only place to sit is in a restaurant. There are several scattered throughout the store, but usually the most inexpensive item exceeds six pounds, which I didn't have. I did manage to find a cafeteria-type room where I bought a chicken kebab and a soda, thinking there would be a designated dining area for these snacks.

I was wrong.

In fact, not only was there no dining area for poor people (me) to eat their food, but they wouldn't let you eat your food anywhere in the store. So I was forced to exit the store (in my posh dress and boots) and eat my chicken kebab and soda at a bus stop in the cold rainy night. But don't worry: the kebab was delicious. And I got the chance to sit for five minutes before the weather drove me back inside.

After another half hour spent in the luxury pet store and harry potter shop, my feet were getting worse. I was getting pretty desperate by this point, because I hadn't yet complained to my friends, and these being new friends, I didn't want to be known as "that girl who dresses well but complains about it." I wasn't about to go back to the bus stop and just sit there in the rain. So I resorted to my last resort: the bathroom (or "the loo" in British-speak).

So off I scampered to the ladies' room. Unfortunately, the bathrooms are not as luxurious as the rest of Harrods. They didn't even have padded toilet seats or those french bowls that wipe your bum for you. That's why I was so surprised to notice the lady standing between the sinks and the door, looking very official. "There's no way," I thought, but sure enough another woman exiting the bathroom handed the official-looking woman money. The attendant hadn't even done anything, and the toilets were normal toilets. There was absolutely no reason why I should pay here anything.

I tried to sneak out, but was caught by a quiet cough from the attendant. Awkwardly, I shuffled around in my purse, ready to announce that my husband doesn't let me have an allowance, when I saw her eyes drop to my fancy shoes (whose open toes screamed "my driver drops me off at the door"), wander up my expensive sweater dress, and then back down to my purse, expectantly.

So I gave her all the money I had on me (seventeen pence) and ran away as fast as my swollen feet could carry me.

We left Harrods soon after, and I looked forward to the tube where I could sit for the entire journey back to Camden. But it being rush hour, we had to stand waiting for four trains just to get on one of the pods. Once on, we stood the whole way. At this point, I broke down and told my girlfriends that my feet were killing me, to which they admitted the same and very considerately told me that they "couldn't ever spend the whole day in those heels." Because I was the only one wearing three inches.

They couldn't have been having nearly as bad a time as I was, however, because everyone but me managed to walk the half mile from the tube station to our dorm. I took the bus.

Beauty hurts.

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