Now I must say. it is a giant mall. There might be 6 other malls bigger than this one but this is plenty huge to kill a couple hours and get lost (more on that a little later). I had been there last year but I guess I must've only explored a fraction of the actually mall. It took me a couple hours just to walk all floors!!! I didn't go into very many stores. Most stores are the really nice expensive stuff. Chanel, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Mont Blanc, etc. This mall is so huge that there were two of the same stores! And the department stores had smaller sections of some the aforementioned expensive ass shit (and some I didn't name). The whole thing really was disgusting. So much money flying around that mall and for what?!? Clothing?!? Accessories?!? Disgusting...the whole rich lot of them! Really threw me into sharp realization that I need to get my money situation in order (damn student loans and credit cards!!!!). But the mall did have it's fair share of affordable stores and kiosks too, so the whole mall doesn't deserved to be demolished. I definitely did have that scene from Dark Knight Rises playing in my head; the one where they storm all the rich peoples apartments and rip them from their decadent lives. One can dream I guess. Well like I said earlier I did enter some stores. The first department store I entered was Neiman Marcus. Now you are probably wondering why I had ventured into that store after just going on a rant of the expensiveness of a majority of the mall. Well I had wanted to go to Macy's as they always have good clearance for men, but alas I was lost and could not find the Macy's I had seen over an hour ago. Quick side note this mall does NOT have very many mall directories. Huge oversight there...or perhaps not; perhaps they want you to wander around with no direction or means of finding a direction to go where they desire to shop, in hopes that they will stumble into other stores and spend even more money than they initially intended...perhaps. Anyways I found myself in Neiman Marcus.
This is a giant Neiman Marcus. It was 4 stories I believe of all really expensive things. Needless to say I did not belong in there, but since I had just finished some visits and was still in my suit no one gave me a second thought, as per usual. After finding no sign of a men's section on the main floor (and no signs telling me where the Men's section might be found) I made my way up to the second floor. Same luck there...so I naturally made my way up to the third floor! It was on my decent to the third floor that the fire alarm in the store went off. And just like when any fire alarm goes off in a non-grade school setting people do not pay it any attention and look for someone else to take the lead. Realizing that we are on the third floor and that perhaps in the case of a real fire I may want to be closer to the ground floor I made my way back down the escalator (just when I found the men's section!) On the second floor I did find some employees which had radios to other employees who presumably knew what was going on. These fine and stellar employees of the Neiman kept saying false alarm (something I am quite familiar with at my place of work.) So naturally after hearing the phrase false alarm for the fifth time I went back up to the 3rd floor to continue my browsing. As you might imagine I didn't find anything I liked in which I also liked the price. Don't get me wrong there was plenty of fine clothing but none, in my not-so-humble opinion, of which the price justified the purchase. I am not sure how much time exactly passed by (probably like ten minutes) but I couldn't help but notice that no one else was around. No one was shopping, no one asking if I needed help nor trying to hustle me into buying something I don't need (more of that later) and more importantly no one at all in the men's section. No on the third floor. No one on the second from the short trip of one down escalator to the other (which were still going) and then when I reached the first floor there they all were....waiting outside the store. I would like to take this time to thank management for their superb job of making sure customers are out before they themselves evacuate. Perhaps you should look at the Italian Cruise ship industry...give that a whirl. Anyways at this point I promptly made my exit from the store and the whole area of the mall. I don't there was any fire as I didn't hear anything about a fire, so I really do believe it was a faulty alarm. Furthermore I didn't hear an firetrucks or other emergency vehicles but then again I got out of there fast and that mall is so huge there could be a riot on one end and the people on the other would be none the wiser of it.
(if this is getting too long then this would be the best time to take a break as I am going to talk about the fear part of the trip to the mall)
So like I had said I hightailed it out of there. Wandering the mall again I had no idea where I was when I got yelled at by girl from a kiosk about 15 meters away. I was in the middle of responding to an email on my phone so when the yelling started I had no idea what was going on...it turned out she was just trying to get my attention to lure me into her web. She came with ferocious speed, grabbed me and dragged me over to her kiosk. Before I knew what happened my hands were hovering above a wash basin as she was spewing some unintelligible nonsense about the salts from the dead sea. Then she critiqued my hands and the callouses as if they were the worst she had ever seen! Always up for something new and different I found my self rubbing the dead sea salts into my hands and boy were my hands soft. It was nice and soft and she then gave me some body butter and she told me something about lotion being bad, but since I am always up for something free I bore through it. Then came the selling point. I could have the salt straight from the dead sea and the body butter with all its buttery goodness for the low low low price of $99.00 USD. Wow what a...crock of crap (set to simmer all day). Being a seasoned vet in the world of kiosking she knew this wasn't going to fly so she told me (in her thick Israeli accent) that just for me I could have the salt for $50.00 USD! Wow still a crock of crap! I told her no. The haggling began. I told her I had to think about it...I hadn't planned on spending one hundred bucks on salt! This must've offended her because she said Fine! Fine! threw her hands up and started yelling at me! We went back and forth on why I didn't need fancy salts to fix a problem I really never had anyways. I don't know what really set her off....I'm sorry you are tasked with the duty of selling over priced exfoliating salts but I wasn't born yesterday nor do I have all this money to spend on salt (dead sea or not). In the middle of rant I promptly turned and left. The positive side to all of this is that I had the world's softest hands! for about 30 minutes. Then they went back to how they were before ....and then got a little drier. That's what you get for using salt!
Well it took me another hour after the salt incident to find out where I parked and the entire time I was terrified I would end up by that kiosk. Military service is required of all Israeli citizens so she could probably snuff me out when my back is turned. Thankfully I stayed away and finally found the section I entered in at ( had to go through Saks 5th ave! a store i never enter normally ha!) And I even got some christmas shopping out of the say. Yes it's September. I like to get it done early so during the holidays I can sit back and enjoy watching everyone freak outt, but that's besides the point. Should you ever find your self in the 7th largest mall of North America keep your wits about you and watch out!
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