Hint: First, You Hold It Up by the Shoulder Seams

I am the sort of person who gets all teary at weddings. Over the emotion of it all, of course. But also over the fact that SOMEONE should have done SOMETHING to let those poor bridesmaids know that they look like they slept in their dresses. Would it have killed them to run an iron over that silk before they put it on and traipsed down the aisle in it?

I notice things like this because I have spent decades sewing--everything from wool skirts to Halloween costumes to slinky little numbers for evening. Currently, I possess the perfect, torturous combination of enough skill to make many things myself without the actual time to do so, which leaves me horribly loathe to pay full price for anything--because, of course, I know precisely how much that fabric would cost, and if I could do it myself (not that I will, but I could), how can I justify spending that much on it? I can also spot bad tailoring a mile off, and cheaply cut clothes don't hang right, but do you know what they pay professors who work in the Humanities? So what I really want is clothes that should be expensive but aren't.

Hence, I frequent the large discount stores (you know, the ones whose names rhyme with BK Flax and Narshall's). Perhaps you, too, are too cheap to buy Tahari off the rack at Nordstrom's and instead prefer to buy it at 1/10 the price when you luck into finding it on the rack at your local ______ (fill in the blank the with TJMaxshall's name of your choice). If not, and you think these stores are a high proportion of junk, I will grant you that. But I will see your junk and raise you some perfect Calvin Klein jeans ($10!), sporty DKNY summer tops, cashmere sweaters, gorgeous camel wool retro 40s skirts, or the sweetest pale blue-grey sweater dress you ever saw by Michael Kors ($25!).

Here is what I have noticed about these stores. First: they are torture to shop in because the Good, the Bad, and the Atrociously Ugly are jammed into racks indicriminately and require tremendous patience to untangle, particularly when your children are doing their utmost to add confusion to the racks by playing inside them and stirring up the clothes even further. Second: every single employee in these stores has apparently taken a required course in Incompetent Folding of Garments of All Sizes and Descriptions.

I defy you to find a single employee in any of these stores who can fold one single solitary pair of shorts. The degree to which they all, universally, butcher the process of folding something very simple like a basic sweater is astonishing. It's gone from driving me completely batty to leaving me utterly fascinated.

No where else on the planet, I am sure, does the act of folding clothing precisely mimic the hand gestures for "Pat-a-cake." Don't know what I mean? Sing your way through to the "roll it and roll it" part, and then you'll know precisely how they fold things at these stores. It's like the instructor for these hours-long folding classes stands up at the front of the room loudly singing "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round" while demonstrating proper folding technique for an evening gown.

My three and five year old children can fold better than these folks.

Now, before you go all, "what do you expect from minimum wage employees, poor buggers" on me, please remember that all of us, no matter our day jobs, have to do laundry. And at some point, one assumes, we take that laundry out of the drier and put it into the drawers. And between those two clothes-resting locations, there is typically a little process that most of us like to call F-O-L-D-I-N-G.

Folding.

Isn't it just a basic life skill? Doesn't everyone, at some point in his or her life, need to learn how to fold a t-shirt? So how is it possible that the employees at these stores can unfailingly manage to put thick, cotton-and-wool sweaters into such tremendous disarray while "folding" them as I check out, that garments that are made of practically un-wrinkleable fabric look like wadded up bird's nests when I get home? And are wrinkled?

The other thing that is almost miraculous is their sleight-of-hand. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to help them out by doing the folding myself. But unlike at the grocery store, where any move towards loading your own bags will automatically result in the evaporation of any and all bag-boys, at TJMaxshalls, the cashier does some tricky hand work what with the removal of the security tags and the ringing up so as to make it completely impossible for you to fold anything yourself. And so, you stand there, helpless, while your brand new soft and yummy sweater dress is unceremoniously treated like a meatball, and rolled into a wad that completely disregards the necessary appendages of arms and turtlenecks.

Seriously, if they weren't so disingenuous about the whole thing, I could understand it better. If they made no pretense of folding, and just shoved items into bags, I could understand. They are in a hurry, perhaps. This is what comes of discount shopping.

But they TRY. They make actual folding efforts. They take time with the folding. But the time involves staring off into space, and rolling their garment-filled hands over and over each other like some kind of basic dance move that will end in jazz hands.

It's like the folding is a reminder: don't feel too empowered by your recent purchase of deeply discounted cashmere goodness; wadded up, you can't tell it apart from a Target turtleneck.

And yet, once you take it out of the bag, you SO can tell the difference. Which makes even the maddening folding worth it, don't you think?