A Real Steal

[bloodyrosemccoy]

We have discovered the Secret Vulture Number at work!

 

See, aside from putting clothes back badly hung up in all the wrong places, vulture shopping has another important aspect to it: circling. There is more circling than I would have thought possible. I have had the following conversation more times than I can even remember:

 

VULTURE: (holds up an entire 3-piece suit) How much is this?

AMELIA: Hang on, let me check. (examines price tag; runs it through calculator) With the discount, it comes to one dollar and fifty cents.

VULTURE: (purses lips) Do you think it’ll go any lower?

AMELIA: Lower than a dollar fifty for a three-piece suit?

VULTURE: (shrewdly) I think I’ll wait.

 

Now, inevitably you’re going to find another vulture willing to swoop for a $1.50 suit, and so by the time our prices go down again, most of the nicer stuff is gone, and the shrewd vulture is left with a much uglier, possibly hairy pink suit. But hey—they’re getting it for 75¢! Oh, that clever vulture.

 

This continued on through today, where we are now down to the dregs—the ugly shit nobody would wear in a million years along with a few remaining extra-smalls and extra-larges of nice things. And today, we went from 70% to 75% off.*

 

And the vultures all swooped at once.

 

Apparently, 75% is the Magic Vulture Number. I still had clever business dealers putting 70%-off stuff back on the shelves a couple of days ago to “wait for it to get lower,” but when it gets down to a quarter of the original price, apparently the wait is over. Today people were hauling stacks of ugly crap up to the counter, buying fifteen items, trying on everything in the story, buying two of the exact same item—yes, for themselves, not for like their sister or something—and going nuts in general.

 

It felt like we had stumbled upon an important secret, or at least some psychological phenomenon none of us had ever even realized existed. It was all we could talk about.

 

(Well, almost all. There was that point where the hangers, which have declared open war on me, scored a great victory by ripping the nail off my index finger. God fucking ow damn. And of course there was the decline in professionalism among the staff—the dog, for example, barks all the time now. No sense of decorum, that one.)

 

 

*As versus that day that some stuff was 50% off and then an added 20% off that. I had quite a few people who are not familiar with numbers say, “So it’s 70% off, then?”

Comments

[cwoolard.livejournal.com]

...and the shrewd vulture is left with a much uglier, possibly hairy pink suit. But hey—they’re getting it for 75¢! Oh, that clever vulture.

Wait, what, you sell clothes for muppets?

And of course there was the decline in professionalism among the staff—the dog, for example, barks all the time now.

OK, the dog's an employee. Must be muppets. Nevermind.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Of course not! That would be silly!

We merely have a couple of suits that look like they're MADE of Muppets.

Now that you mention it, perhaps our decline in professionalism can be measured from the point where we made the dog an employee.

[bean-bunny.livejournal.com]

Are you allowed to say where you work? I'm wondering where I can get suits for that price.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* Prices may have been exaggerated for comedic effect.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I buy two of the exact same thing if I really like it. That way it doesn't wear out as fast.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Huh. That is foreign to me, but it's good to know the reason.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I've ripped nails off before. Fucking OW! I feel your pain.

[beccastareyes]

I buy jeans that are exactly the same. Mainly because there are two brands of jeans that fit me well, and both are irritatingly expensive, so I end up buying several pairs when they go on sale. (With shirts, I generally just buy different colors if I like them -- I don't want to look like a cartoon character.)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, JEANS, yeah, because they're jeans, but somehow that's the only one I ever thought of.

And I do have multiple colors of the same shirt or cami or whatever (ask me about my Mood Hat!), but they do not count as duplicate items if they're different colors.

[beccastareyes]

I mean, there are just too many things out there to have two of the exact same, especially with different colors.

Okay, I'm asking you about the Mood Hat. :-)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* Forgot to answer this. I have two almost-identical hats--one is purple, one is green. For some reason that confused all sorts of people on campus, who would stare at me, squint, and say, "Wasn't that hat GREEN/PURPLE yesterday?" It happened so often I started saying it was a "mood hat," and it changed color depending on my mood.

The purple one is in this icon. Hats like this are my trademark, it seems.

[beccastareyes]

As a hat person myself, I approve.

(I need to get or make more hats...)

[packbat.livejournal.com]

%75 percent off. Remarkable.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

We're going out of business. Soon we'll be paying them to take stuff away.