It has been remarked on occasions, but not usually very nicely, that I am a great one for writing letters to people that have pissed me off. This is because I think it's pretty mean to gossip about people and not tell them directly when they have really upset you to at least give them the chance to change things or to talk with you about them. When I get really upset I cannot clearly articulate myself so I have to go away and write things down.
Recently I was in a sporting store (I won't name them and I will explain why further in the story) to purchase some new training gear (Good ole Tar-zhay only supplies so much) as I had left my gym gear at home and was meeting the PT straight after work so I'd have no chance to go home.
Fortunately there is a gym shop near my office (of course there is, it's in New Farm, it's right across from the Sass & Bide shop, the Espresso shop, and the expensive European shoe shop) so I dived in during a lunch break to pick up a top, some yoga pants and some new runners.
I won't go into all the boring details but needless to say, I was treated like Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman", pre-makeover. I was completely ignored, my questions were treated like idiot ones, and the final insult was this blonde Amazonian shop assistant crossing her arms and looking at me as though I was something she scraped from her runners after her afternoon pose-run through New Farm park as I asked her a question about the shoes.
I thought "there is no way I'm giving this bitch one red cent of my money" and walked up to the Valley and purchased everything I needed in shops there instead.
I got back to the office and typed up a letter to the company's head office and sent it via e-mail immediately.
Not 1 hour later I was called by the company's owner in a red-rage about my treatment and apologising profusely for the way his 2 New Farm assistants had treated me. Furthermore he sent me out a gift voucher for his shop with a letter again apologising for how I was treated.
When I returned to work on Wednesday I note (without any glee I can assure you) that a new woman was opening the shop that day.
At the time, part of me felt that I shouldn't have bothered writing the letter, and another part of me said "No, write it." I would rather know when things are going wrong than wander along in ignorance of why people have suddenly dropped off visiting me.
I won't name the store because I genuinely believe the owner has tried to do the right thing and that that their store motto isn't "target size 14-16 women and make them leave their store without purchasing anything" (unlike some of the other stores in New Farm).
I said in my letter that I just wanted support in my efforts to lose weight and gain fitness and that I had hoped their store would be able to help. I guess store owner can't always know how truly awful some of their staff are unless we tell them.
Anyway, it appears as though Amazon woman is looking for a new job, I'm sure I haven't reduced her size-prejudice by my actions but maybe in the future she'll start considering her day-to-day behaviour.
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