What’s significant, let alone amusing, about a lot of girls owning the same dress that’s on sale at a local big-box store?
Related
30 Comments
The joke is that the mother actually thought she was the only one clever enough to take advantage of a sale. Remember, “customers are stupid” is a core conceit of this strip.
What’s significant is that the mom in sufficiently naïve to believe that her daughter will be the only girl at the Easter egg hunt who will be wearing the dress, and therefore, be the “belle” of the hunt. Not very amusing; just a comment on the cluelessness of some parents.
It’s a fashion faux pas for two women/girls to show up in the same dress. And it’s usually assumed when you find a particular perfect dress the run would be small enough that you won’t have two people in the same dress. If you do it’s an indication that you actually shopped at a store whose run was large or impersonal enough to be socially inferior.
So the joke is Big Box Mart is such a mass market production all thoughts of individuality are abruptly lost.
…. *rimshot*? … any response…
The idea that anyone would be so naive to expect any thing else from Big Box Mart is practically unfathomable to the point its impossible to imagine any humor in this. It’s also a bit disturbing that this social convention that is old-fashioned and ostracizing to begin with would be fostered to children is more disturbing then any symphathy I may have.
Of course the kids don’t care at all.
I read it as the first two panels are from an advert for the big box store, last panel is reality.
I dislike adverts. :P
As Brian pointed out, the girls do not seem to care that they are all wearing the same dress.
There are many schools today where students are required to wear a “uniform”. The little girls might not even know that is not “normal”.
Given that there are three other copies of the same dress, I don’t know how Mom could have thought her daughter would have a unique look.
Whoever gets to the store first gets to be unique. Usually, that lasts for a while, except A) for first day of school, when everybody’s mom makes them wear brand new clothes, and B) and Easter, for girls, who get new spring clothes starting at Easter.
Of course, if your dad is the one who buys clothes for you, then your wardrobe is probably less tied to current style and fashion, and more to “does this fit? OK, good.”
Four other dresses – 0ne on the mannequin is for sale, too.
Very likely more than four: we’re just seeing what’s currently on display.
“If we got it, it’s out on the racks.’ There’s no more ‘back room’ or storage area or basement anymore. Which we could NOT convince my MIL of; she was ALWAYS wanting to know if there was more of something-or-other, in a different color or size. Which is why our mantra is, “If you see it and like it, buy it, ’cause it ain’t gonna be there tomorrow!”
““If we got it, it’s out on the racks.’ There’s no more ‘back room’ or storage area or basement anymore.”
Except that there is. Today’s inventory management systems are sophisticated enough to tell you that although store #45887 is out of stock, store #19945, across town, has two left. We can have one here for you at 10:00am tomorrow, or you can head over there and pick it up. Don’t believe them when they tell you they can’t do this.
Getting it from another store is hardly the same as getting it from the ‘back room’ or the basement.
Andréa: Presumably that depends on the store. I’ve still been in stores recently where they’ve said “Let me go check in back and see if there’s more” and then actually come back with something. (When they say that, I’m never sure if they’re just humoring me, so I definitely remember the erratic positive reinforcement. :) )
OK, I give up. Maybe it’s ’cause I shop Walmart when I don’t shop online, so I’ve never had the experience of ‘checking in the back’ . . .
“Getting it from another store is hardly the same as getting it from the ‘back room’ or the basement.”
Nor is it the same as not getting it at all.
“Presumably that depends on the store. I’ve still been in stores recently where they’ve said ‘Let me go check in back and see if there’s more’ and then actually come back with something.”
Even in stores that don’t really have a “back room”, there’s something called “go backs” which are items that were picked up from shelves by a customer, but then ultimately not purchased. Sometimes the customer puts it back on different shelves, and sometimes customers change their minds at checkout (or their card is declined). Then, sometimes an item is located in more than one place in the store. So the display you’re looking at is empty, but there’s another place in the store where there’s more. You’ll see this in grocery stores where an item is on sale for the week and featured on an aisle end-cap, as well as its usual location in the store, or candy which is sometimes stocked on a regular shelf, and near the checkouts for impulse purchases.
I’m not at all shy about asking clerks to check in the back, and they often do find what I’m looking for. Or, for electronics or appliances, locate them for me at other stores.
Unlike in the Feutiverse, I rarely get the sense that businesses and customers are in an adversarial relationship.
Recently at Costo a stranger and I were both trying to find an article of men’s clothing in a certain size and color, with no luck. An employee was working in that department, we asked her if they might have more in the back. She said she would check and be back in five minutes. The stranger gave up after 10 minutes, I stuck it out a little longer, even left my cart there so she would know I would be back and browsed nearby. I felt quite the fool when she never did return.
Robert used to work (while in college) in the “basement” shoe department of a large department store chain. (As opposed to the better shoes upstairs – where the employees received a commission when they made sales.) This is back when the shoes were all in the back room and a sample was out. A customer would ask for a shoe in a size/color he knew that they were out of and he would tell them so. They would insist he check. So he would go and stand in the back room and then come out and tell them again that they were out of the shoe.
Which is actually a bit better than when I would shop for shoes and be told “We don’t have that in 5-1/2, but here it is in a 7.” This never made sense to me.
For those who don’t know about the problem of wearing the same dress – think of Lucy and Ethel being on a TV show and buying the same dresses and proceeding to rip each other dress apart – while on the show.
Thought of this afterwards –
They used to say that women never wanted to be seen in the same dress as someone else at the event, but men were always happy when other men were dressed the same as they knew that they had worn the right clothing. :-)
“’We don’t have that in 5-1/2, but here it is in a 7.’ This never made sense to me.”
Makes sense to me. Given a historical trend that women believe that smaller feet are more attractive than large feet, generations of women have been jamming their feet into the smallest shoe that they can get their feet into, rather than a shoe that is confortable to wear. Given all that, it is reasonable to assume that a woman asking for a 5-1/2 might walk away happy with a 7.
(And if she was buying shoes for a child, well, you want these shoes to last, even as the child’s feet grow, right?)
The back room or alternate store inventory definitely depend on the store and what you are buying. For clothing, there are stores like TJ Maxx where everything is out, it’s mostly pre-sorted by size rather than style, and what you see is what they have with the very slight chance that the one you want is on the go-back rack by the dressing rooms. Then there are department stores, where I’m not sure if they have stuff in the back, but they can certainly check to see if another store nearby has inventory. Now for electronics or toys or tools or similar non-perishable items (yes, as far as I can tell, fashion is “perishable”), most of those stores have extra inventory in the back and they can certainly check nearby stores too. Even most grocery stores have more canned/boxed stuff in the back, though it depends on the item. Some stuff, like bread and chips and soda, are brought in by distributors, and there may not be any in the back.
Actually, I find that there’s almost always more soda in the back, especially when there’s any sort of sale going on: there just isn’t room on the shelves for all the cartons, even when they use the endcaps.
My retail management career was extremely brief, back in the mid-80’s, and even then the trend away from keeping stock in a warehouse was well-established. Big-box retailers are almost all sales floor and no warehouse, and they were the big trend in the 80’s. Improving computer systems made “just in time” stocking a useful option.
“Actually, I find that there’s almost always more soda in the back”
Sometimes at Walgreens, especially if there is no display. I’ve had success asking them to check the back.
James Pollack – okay, but that does not explain the times they would bring me out a pair of size 5’s which would not fit me – or someone pretending their size 7’s are 5 1/2’s.
Of course, these days either side is close to impossible to find and I end up buying Boys size 4 instead.
Another trend in “fashion” is to intentionally mislabel things to cater to a customer’s vanity.
So the size printed on the box may or may not correspond to the same size printed on another box, or to anything like a standard. Children’s shoes are pretty standardized… children don’t have vanity (or purchasing authority) enough to bother catering to. Adult sized shoes are a different story entirely.
My shoes are all athletic shoes. Not because I’m an athlete, or think I’m an athlete, but because those are the only kind of shoes that ever fit my feet comfortably. I even have some athletic shoes with steel toes in them, from when I worked in a job that required them. But I find that my “size” ranges from 10 to 12, depending on the manufacturer and style of shoe.
If I went in thinking “I’m a size 10”, and would only look at shoes labeled “size 10”, most of my shoes would be the wrong size, because for some of my shoes I’m an 11, and for some a 12.
James Pollack – I am lucky and not lucky about shoe sizes. My feet have been the same size since I was around 12 years old and while in college I discovered the secret of children’s size 4 being the same size as I needed (and when the same shoe existed in women’s and girls – the girls’s shoe was cheaper). I tend to live in boys skateboard sneakers from Walmart – inexpensive, long lasting and terribly comfortable except in winter when I wear boys boots.
Comics I Don't Understand 
The joke is that the mother actually thought she was the only one clever enough to take advantage of a sale. Remember, “customers are stupid” is a core conceit of this strip.
What’s significant is that the mom in sufficiently naïve to believe that her daughter will be the only girl at the Easter egg hunt who will be wearing the dress, and therefore, be the “belle” of the hunt. Not very amusing; just a comment on the cluelessness of some parents.
It’s a fashion faux pas for two women/girls to show up in the same dress. And it’s usually assumed when you find a particular perfect dress the run would be small enough that you won’t have two people in the same dress. If you do it’s an indication that you actually shopped at a store whose run was large or impersonal enough to be socially inferior.
So the joke is Big Box Mart is such a mass market production all thoughts of individuality are abruptly lost.
…. *rimshot*? … any response…
The idea that anyone would be so naive to expect any thing else from Big Box Mart is practically unfathomable to the point its impossible to imagine any humor in this. It’s also a bit disturbing that this social convention that is old-fashioned and ostracizing to begin with would be fostered to children is more disturbing then any symphathy I may have.
Of course the kids don’t care at all.
I read it as the first two panels are from an advert for the big box store, last panel is reality.
I dislike adverts. :P
As Brian pointed out, the girls do not seem to care that they are all wearing the same dress.
There are many schools today where students are required to wear a “uniform”. The little girls might not even know that is not “normal”.
Given that there are three other copies of the same dress, I don’t know how Mom could have thought her daughter would have a unique look.
Whoever gets to the store first gets to be unique. Usually, that lasts for a while, except A) for first day of school, when everybody’s mom makes them wear brand new clothes, and B) and Easter, for girls, who get new spring clothes starting at Easter.
Of course, if your dad is the one who buys clothes for you, then your wardrobe is probably less tied to current style and fashion, and more to “does this fit? OK, good.”
Four other dresses – 0ne on the mannequin is for sale, too.
Very likely more than four: we’re just seeing what’s currently on display.
“If we got it, it’s out on the racks.’ There’s no more ‘back room’ or storage area or basement anymore. Which we could NOT convince my MIL of; she was ALWAYS wanting to know if there was more of something-or-other, in a different color or size. Which is why our mantra is, “If you see it and like it, buy it, ’cause it ain’t gonna be there tomorrow!”
““If we got it, it’s out on the racks.’ There’s no more ‘back room’ or storage area or basement anymore.”
Except that there is. Today’s inventory management systems are sophisticated enough to tell you that although store #45887 is out of stock, store #19945, across town, has two left. We can have one here for you at 10:00am tomorrow, or you can head over there and pick it up. Don’t believe them when they tell you they can’t do this.
Well, at least it wasn’t supposed to be a Paris original…
https://youtu.be/c304cP4wL-M?t=4453
Getting it from another store is hardly the same as getting it from the ‘back room’ or the basement.
Andréa: Presumably that depends on the store. I’ve still been in stores recently where they’ve said “Let me go check in back and see if there’s more” and then actually come back with something. (When they say that, I’m never sure if they’re just humoring me, so I definitely remember the erratic positive reinforcement. :) )
OK, I give up. Maybe it’s ’cause I shop Walmart when I don’t shop online, so I’ve never had the experience of ‘checking in the back’ . . .
“Getting it from another store is hardly the same as getting it from the ‘back room’ or the basement.”
Nor is it the same as not getting it at all.
“Presumably that depends on the store. I’ve still been in stores recently where they’ve said ‘Let me go check in back and see if there’s more’ and then actually come back with something.”
Even in stores that don’t really have a “back room”, there’s something called “go backs” which are items that were picked up from shelves by a customer, but then ultimately not purchased. Sometimes the customer puts it back on different shelves, and sometimes customers change their minds at checkout (or their card is declined). Then, sometimes an item is located in more than one place in the store. So the display you’re looking at is empty, but there’s another place in the store where there’s more. You’ll see this in grocery stores where an item is on sale for the week and featured on an aisle end-cap, as well as its usual location in the store, or candy which is sometimes stocked on a regular shelf, and near the checkouts for impulse purchases.
I’m not at all shy about asking clerks to check in the back, and they often do find what I’m looking for. Or, for electronics or appliances, locate them for me at other stores.
Unlike in the Feutiverse, I rarely get the sense that businesses and customers are in an adversarial relationship.
Recently at Costo a stranger and I were both trying to find an article of men’s clothing in a certain size and color, with no luck. An employee was working in that department, we asked her if they might have more in the back. She said she would check and be back in five minutes. The stranger gave up after 10 minutes, I stuck it out a little longer, even left my cart there so she would know I would be back and browsed nearby. I felt quite the fool when she never did return.
Robert used to work (while in college) in the “basement” shoe department of a large department store chain. (As opposed to the better shoes upstairs – where the employees received a commission when they made sales.) This is back when the shoes were all in the back room and a sample was out. A customer would ask for a shoe in a size/color he knew that they were out of and he would tell them so. They would insist he check. So he would go and stand in the back room and then come out and tell them again that they were out of the shoe.
Which is actually a bit better than when I would shop for shoes and be told “We don’t have that in 5-1/2, but here it is in a 7.” This never made sense to me.
For those who don’t know about the problem of wearing the same dress – think of Lucy and Ethel being on a TV show and buying the same dresses and proceeding to rip each other dress apart – while on the show.
Thought of this afterwards –
They used to say that women never wanted to be seen in the same dress as someone else at the event, but men were always happy when other men were dressed the same as they knew that they had worn the right clothing. :-)
“’We don’t have that in 5-1/2, but here it is in a 7.’ This never made sense to me.”
Makes sense to me. Given a historical trend that women believe that smaller feet are more attractive than large feet, generations of women have been jamming their feet into the smallest shoe that they can get their feet into, rather than a shoe that is confortable to wear. Given all that, it is reasonable to assume that a woman asking for a 5-1/2 might walk away happy with a 7.
(And if she was buying shoes for a child, well, you want these shoes to last, even as the child’s feet grow, right?)
The back room or alternate store inventory definitely depend on the store and what you are buying. For clothing, there are stores like TJ Maxx where everything is out, it’s mostly pre-sorted by size rather than style, and what you see is what they have with the very slight chance that the one you want is on the go-back rack by the dressing rooms. Then there are department stores, where I’m not sure if they have stuff in the back, but they can certainly check to see if another store nearby has inventory. Now for electronics or toys or tools or similar non-perishable items (yes, as far as I can tell, fashion is “perishable”), most of those stores have extra inventory in the back and they can certainly check nearby stores too. Even most grocery stores have more canned/boxed stuff in the back, though it depends on the item. Some stuff, like bread and chips and soda, are brought in by distributors, and there may not be any in the back.
Actually, I find that there’s almost always more soda in the back, especially when there’s any sort of sale going on: there just isn’t room on the shelves for all the cartons, even when they use the endcaps.
My retail management career was extremely brief, back in the mid-80’s, and even then the trend away from keeping stock in a warehouse was well-established. Big-box retailers are almost all sales floor and no warehouse, and they were the big trend in the 80’s. Improving computer systems made “just in time” stocking a useful option.
“Actually, I find that there’s almost always more soda in the back”
Sometimes at Walgreens, especially if there is no display. I’ve had success asking them to check the back.
James Pollack – okay, but that does not explain the times they would bring me out a pair of size 5’s which would not fit me – or someone pretending their size 7’s are 5 1/2’s.
Of course, these days either side is close to impossible to find and I end up buying Boys size 4 instead.
Another trend in “fashion” is to intentionally mislabel things to cater to a customer’s vanity.
So the size printed on the box may or may not correspond to the same size printed on another box, or to anything like a standard. Children’s shoes are pretty standardized… children don’t have vanity (or purchasing authority) enough to bother catering to. Adult sized shoes are a different story entirely.
My shoes are all athletic shoes. Not because I’m an athlete, or think I’m an athlete, but because those are the only kind of shoes that ever fit my feet comfortably. I even have some athletic shoes with steel toes in them, from when I worked in a job that required them. But I find that my “size” ranges from 10 to 12, depending on the manufacturer and style of shoe.
If I went in thinking “I’m a size 10”, and would only look at shoes labeled “size 10”, most of my shoes would be the wrong size, because for some of my shoes I’m an 11, and for some a 12.
James Pollack – I am lucky and not lucky about shoe sizes. My feet have been the same size since I was around 12 years old and while in college I discovered the secret of children’s size 4 being the same size as I needed (and when the same shoe existed in women’s and girls – the girls’s shoe was cheaper). I tend to live in boys skateboard sneakers from Walmart – inexpensive, long lasting and terribly comfortable except in winter when I wear boys boots.