Dear Beauty Counter Assistant

Is there any need to take such frightful advantage of the plainly foolish and possibly bonkers customer?


Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. If a large, not well dressed lady, wearing no makeup but looking longingly at your over priced wares wanders past, you can just let me go sometimes.
There’s a certain cruelty to chasing after me and offering to make me look ten years younger.


I admit it, I may be the author of my own misfortune. There is little advantage to wandering up to a beauty counter and saying something as stupid as “I’m looking for the perfect lip gloss / foundation / moisturiser”. I realise that I’m setting myself up for a fall.


There’s clearly a golden opportunity for you here. But you don’t absolutely have to take it you know. Sometimes it’s fine to say “There’s no such thing dear” or “I wouldn’t bother, it’s not going to help” or even, if you’re in a particularly good mood “Why? You look fabulous as you are”.


But no. You obviously know that here is a desperate and sort of tragic woman, who will gladly hand over the mortgage money to improve her saggy and rapidly aging face.


Do you absolutely have to tell me that my current skincare routine is completely hopeless and that I should immediately purchase a new cleanser, toner, night moisturiser, day moisturiser, serum and extra moisturising mask? I know you probably work on commission, but seriously?


Do you have to offer me little presents and gifts if I buy everything, right now, without further ado? And to add insult to injury, when I fall into this awful trap, do not give me tiny mascara that’s too small for anyone but Barbie to use, or one of those samples that come in a little sort of sachet that the product has to be scraped out of using the fingernail. Especially if it’s foundation.


Sometimes, you know, it’s fine to just sell me a bloody lip gloss that suits me. That won’t make me look as if I have no lips at all (there’s a difference between “nude “ and “invisible” you know) or like a teenage goth.


Just admit that unless I am going to start spending half my wages on botox, there is no way my face is going to stop dropping toward my collar bones.


Stop taking advantage of my stupidity, please. Or I’ll stand at the end of your counter, with my dried up droopy face, shouting “Don’t believe a word out of her, I did, and look at the state of me!”


Yours in good faith