A woman walks into a dress shop

Mother, give me strength, for I know not where to start.

This is not how I expected to make a jail, but a jail surely shall be made.

It is my intention to kill a shop clerk. You do not know her (though now you know it is a her) and you do not know the shop that is the likely site of her demise.

But then, you do know her – so many hers.

I was going to say the thing I’m talking about happens to everyone except her. But of course, it happens to her all the time – at other shops, banks, licensing offices (any branch), passport offices (experiences vary), all sorts of places.

Bemoaning poor customer service on a personal level is more common than “please” and “thank you” these days.

I know that on many levels a certain degree of no-thinking is happening. Also no-empathising, no-humaning, no-caring.

But I think we really have to start with a lack of seeing the shopper as an actual person and not some disturbance to a hitherto happy day.

Scene: a store of the ladies’-formal-wear variety. Enter myself and my beloved friend, the Wallflower, on a quest for that most elusive of treasures: things you like and are your size and you can afford.

We were delighted with the place. Wall-to-wall honest-to-goodness formal. Not one of those with a small section near the back with half a dozen LBDs and half a dozen random acts of fru-fruness.

Here I pick a dress and hold it up.

“For you,” I say triumphantly to the Wallflower. She smiles.

Then everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

Shop clerk looks at us aghast.

“For you?” she wails.

She may as well have said it didn’t come in size whale.

What she says is, “That only come in small, medium and large.”

In the following minutes, hours, days – who knows how long – shop clerk tells us in every way possible (and some I had not considered) that should my friend attempt to try on this dress, there could be stretching, distorting, ripping, shredding, war in the Easter Islands.

The Wallflower exited, quiet and dignified. It would have been even more dignified if she wasn’t dragging me as I rained abuse, threats and the wrath of Moko on the shop fiend.

We did not wake up that morning and say this was the day we were up for a bit of disparagement and belittlement.

Is this the shop clerk’s experience of the world? She was also a plus-size woman. If this is how she is treated perhaps she accepts it as…acceptable.

Making free with comments, insults or jokes about weight is the most normal thing in our country. And it has to stop. And if it takes my killing one salesperson to do it, so be it.

This is not only about the mental health issues around size and weight. This is also about a very warped way of being we’ve allowed ourselves to live in for too long. Our disservice (read both ways) mentality has been normalised. We only complain within our groups of friends or on Facebook. We expect it.

Most of us serve in some way. If we have a job and people expect something of us, we serve. The police serve. The prime minister and president serve. Market vendors, mechanics, musicians – they all serve. We judge their service based on our experience with them.

When a police officer is kind and respectful during an exchange with ye average person, you can bet there’s going to be a letter to the editor. Because we think it remarkable. Decency is so uncommon it must be heralded.

We don’t see each other as people, but merely as moving parts in different situations. This is me as a wallet in search of new shoes. Here I am as Citizen 531 trying to renew her passport. Now I’m yet another patient complaining of chest pains.

I’m never a person being seen by another person.

Service – good service – is effortless grace.

At the unpretentious Dreamy Creamy Ice Cream shop in Maraval, milkshakes are on the menu. I’ve never heard anyone ask for one bar myself and the Cats’ Father. But when they make them, you think they’re making them as they would for themselves or someone they love.

It’s not essential to show such care and attention to the art of milkshake-making, but they do. What you get is not just dear-God-it’s-wonderful, you also feel a bit of – well – love.

Still, I think that dress shop clerk has a date with destiny, and I have one with Golden Grove.