A.

I have met A. during a job interview I had with her. She was the manager of this high-fashion luxury brand shop which was advertised on the local television and on elite levels. I really did not think about anything fishy. Not until I started working there. It was very weird that the shop was always looking for an assistant. There were no stable people working there which I found curious. 

Then I started working there. Politicians and hyped television characters appeared to buy clothes which were overpriced but cheap in fabric. A. was always boasting about how the fabrics are high quality stuff and every single dress is made by her own design. It was a lie. The patterns, ideas, shapes and clothing designs were printed from Pinterest which I found pathetic. Then the printed material was taken to the sewers who made the dress to tha shape of A. She was not a thin lady but neither – how should I say – not thin. She was very manly though and violent. The other collagues always called her Taz the tasmanian devil because when she stormed in the shop she waded through everything.. and everybody. 

The very first week I was folding men’s clothes that I found pretty dull. Some customers came in and we had to sell the brand. How the brand is a high fashion luxury one and known all over the world (I belive no one knows it).

The colleagues were gossiping. A. bought the shop from loans. Huge loans and the busines was not going quite well. They were also talking about possible embezzlements, money laundering, tax cheating and so on. She was very close to the political elite, the colleagues always said and they also commented that it was probably the reason she was never caught with things. As far as I am concerned you can never take gossips as facts but since A. was a very psychopath-like person, I could definitely imagine as she was doing illegal stuffs. 

She was very harsh. Very very harsh. When she scolded someone she stepped in the person’s soul land tried to drag that someone through mud. It was disturbing for me. Watching the verbal violation being done in front of my eyes. Since I was desperate to have a job, I stayed but I only lasted circa fourteen days. The other girls did not last longer either. She always ordered us to smile. To always smile with teeth out. She had it on all the time when a customer was in the shop and when no one saw her, her face changed to some amorphus form I have never seen before. Sadness, unhappiness, despair and distress sat on her face when she was not forced smiling. In the meantime, her forced smiling was something you usually see in a horror movie. It was very very sad. The whole thing.

F. was one of them. She was not tall, neither small. Had long blonde hair and a very characteristic face. She was very beautiful with perfect body and shape anyone would be jealous of. Of course she was not aware of that. With a very low self-esteem she often ended up being with the wrong company (men used her: had sex with her and then they left her). She told me a very sad story how their parents divorced. Her father never contacted her after the separation and her mother was always somewhere outside the country dating different men. Her mother rarely even called her. So she was lost and it was very sad. 

I had no idea what F. had done. Probably nothing A. just wanted to abuse somebody which she always did every day in the shop. I was folding clothes and F. was missing for a very long time. Colleagues started asking where she might be and I started looking for her in the storage and the upper floor which was the bathroom, the kitchen and where the sewers were working. I was looking for F. and I found her not much later. She was crying, shaking and laying on the bathroom floor. A. told her she has a head of a horse, she is ugly, stupid, an idiot and F. should be grateful that A. lets her work in the shop because otherwise she would never put her out in front of the customers. I found it repulsive. I had to convince F. about the truth and which was obvious: she was beautiful, she has a reason to be here, she is worth it and she is much better than this place. It was a very deep conversation with very deep words. I will never forget that thirty minutes I spent with the women’s bathroom with F. laying on the floor and telling her that she really is precious. I managed to pick F. up from the floor and tried to heal the wounds. Later F. quit. Before she left the store on her last day she came up to me and thanked me to open up her eyes. 

F. was out. The next victim was me.

One time she caught me sitting at the cashier’s desk when I should have been standing somewhere else. She was furious. She basically told the same thing to me she did to F. before. Her brutal attitude, the verbal abuse she used made me quit as well. But I still dream about her. I have dreams where she appears and tells nasty things, scolds me her brutal attitude haunts me. It feels really weird when I see her on TV, doing interviews and making media apperiances where she is promoting her brand. It is just so wild and raw. 

A. is not that complex anyway. She grew up with alcoholic parents. She was abused as a kid, as teenager and as a young-adult. Her life was miserable and that is why she turned out to be just like her parents. I confronted her on my last day about this. She ignored me. She became very upset though and wished me that I would never have anything I ever wanted and swore to God that I would never have such a great place that I had when I was let working with her shop. I thought, it is not my fault that she lost contact with reality altough it is sorrowful that the people who worship her have no idea what is going on behind the set. 

It was just a short time but I saw what’s behind the money, the materialism and the luxorious lifestyle. When celebrities came in I did not see what they projected on their social media platforms. I saw the exact opposite. I am glad that I learned a lesson. I will never want to be famous or well-known, neither would like to have a fancy place and sell myself for commercial reasons.