Loving and Hating Victoria's Secret

People who don’t shop at Victoria’s Secret, the company itself, and people who ramble about how evil the store is, all have one thing in common. They don’t understand Victoria’s Secret customers. It’s like Star Wars fans who hate Star Wars—only I don’t have any little hearts left to send to the shareholders at The Limited, or to George Lucas.

Victoria’s Secret customers hate Victoria’s Secret.

We hate shopping online, because of exorbitant shipping fees, and The Limited rationing of coupon codes to the point of censoring other websites. "To ensure that Victoria's Secret customers get the most exclusive and up-to-date offers, the RetailMeNot system is not currently accepting user-uploaded coupons or offer codes." What a load of hooey.

(I went looking around for hyperlinks to add to this article, and I ended up shopping on the Victoria's Secret website AGAIN. It's like some kind of sick addiction, perhaps self-flagellation in the name of paying extra for Wal-Mart quality panties and perfume. I love Bombshell if you're looking for gift ideas for me.)

We hate the shoddy customer service, the return shipping, and when they run out of things. We hate the purchase thresholds that flag us as “resellers” when they know we’re just enthusiasts. Their bottom line is online, and we hate it.

We don’t care that the ads have been Photoshopped, because we know a hack job when we see one. We like hack jobs; that’s why we shop there. We do hate all the complaining about the moral depravity of the ads, especially from those on the internet, where they have likely seen much more deplorable things. (Rule 34, folks.)

We hate PINK. In most stores you HAVE to get past it to get to anything else. They like to trap you in that section with mindless chatter, sometimes using crowds of teenage girls to block you into an estrogen snarl. It was cute at first, watching the girls come in with their mothers, but now it’s just obnoxious.

We hate the college logos, the neon animal patterns and slut slogans printed on panty behinds. It’s not that PINK is 100% unwearable. We just hate it. We all know it’s the McDonald’s of the clothing industry—utter rubbish that’s probably not good for you, but that’s why we like it. We like junk, and apparently our daughters like it even junkier.

We hate the headset-wearing sales associates in their cute little Hillary Clinton pantsuits. They don't just greet you. They drag you through a prolonged, agonizing speech about a panty sale-- when there are HUGE signs that say "PANTY SALE" all over the windows, and inside the store. 

They can't simply say "Welcome to our store. We have a great sale on panties today." They can't give you 160 characters or less and leave you alone. Corporate doesn't allow that. We hate the personnel prattle, but we also hate trying to find someone for access to a fitting room.

To be fair, one former associate told me I'd be flabbergasted at how many people DON'T see the signs. How do you not see a five foot tall neon sign that says "PANTY SALE?" I shouldn't be punished with a doorstopper speech just because other people can't read.

We hate The Limited selection of everything (except PINK). Most of the time, you won't find what you want in your size, no matter what that size is-- unless you wear Extra Small. That one's always plentiful.

Men can’t tell the difference. That’s why they buy us gift cards at Wal-Mart. They don’t understand that we’d rather spend the money at Victoria’s Secret because we complain about it all the time. We hate the men who give us practical things, and we hate them when they come home with the wrong size from Victoria’s Secret.

We hate the men shopping in the store when we go in. We feel creepy being measured for a bra while this guy picks out one slinky outfit after another, drooling like he’s in a hardware store. We hate men who hang outside the fitting room, because they’re not supposed to be there. We don’t care if one of the women inside belongs to you. Go somewhere else.

By the way, any man who is shopping in Victoria’s Secret is either buying lingerie in the hopes of getting lucky with his female that night, or he is buying it to wear himself. That’s not even the most disturbing thing about men shopping there. The worst thing I ever saw was a middle-aged man and woman buying bright yellow lacy thongs for their 16 year old daughter. The dad was peering through his reading glasses saying “Oh yeah, she’ll really like that!” I had to get out of there before I gagged.

We hate the garments. They never fit right, and we require everything to be custom tailored at a mass market price. We expect them to fall apart when we remove them from the bag, yet we continue to buy them. We complain if they wear out after ten years and 10,000 machine washings, because the quality was never up to snuff, and we don’t need no stinking care instructions. Like the Greyjoys in Game of Thrones, “We Do Not ‘Sew.’” The shelf life of the garments is never as long as it should be, but the tissue paper lasts for decades. We know because we find wads of it all over the house like pet hair or men’s socks.

We hate the cosmetics section, in all its filth and aroma, because they never have the fruity body spray we got last time. If they do, it's not recognizable. Apparently it gets discontinued, repackaged and rotated every few months. It's nice to know we’re getting fresh product, but this is overkill.

We hate the clearance bins, which have 18 bottles of our body spray extra cheap, but 17 have been opened and used. The garments are all disorganized, and none of it is stuff you ever saw in the store or online, no matter how much you shop there. Some of it's dingy, some of it's tacky, and some of it's unidentifiable… a lot like the customers.

Victoria’s Secret customers hate other customers. Everyone wants to get through the bin first, and they will kill for it. Ten people are in line ahead of you and only one cashier is working. The customer in front of you pulls a bag out of nowhere and says she needs to make an overly complicated exchange that will take an hour to complete. Another cashier steps behind the counter, and everyone BEHIND you runs to that line, so no matter what, you still have to wait in agony.

Other customers throw hissy fits when we have a coupon they don't have. They sent me a coupon for free tote bag for Christmas one year, and the woman behind me threw her bargain bin panties at the cashier because she was going to wait until SHE was a special customer too. Sometimes it's like Jurassic Park in there.

We hate paying for our stuff. The prices keep shooting up and we “weren’t looking.” We pick out dozens of pieces only to be “shocked” at the total, which we actually kept running in our heads because we didn’t want to have our credit card declined.

We hate the cashier. We hate the small talk, the nitpicking over our coupons, and the Angel card push. We know it’s a credit card and not a frequent shopper card, and we know the person in front of us doesn't have a clue. We want to tell you, but we would rather buy more junk than do the right thing. If they ban us for telling you it’s a trap, we’ll hate it even more.

But that won't happen until they've meticulously wrapped every little thing you bought in pink tissue paper and gently placed it in a big pink bag, taking up valuable moments of your life that you'll never get back.

If only they had taken that much care of the other seventeen bottles of body spray. I might have hated it less.