Rudders at Home

Lured by the thought of £8 shoes (!), I stopped in on the Next sale last Friday afternoon on my way home from work. Next is a clothing store which sells numerous clothing items for everyone in the family, but I’m most familiar with the work wear. For those at home, perhaps think JC Penney’s, but on a smaller scale and definitely focused more towards trends – Sorry Mom, but you wouldn’t find anything to wear at Next!

The Next sales are quite famous, in my book for being chaotic. They only do sales certain times of the year, and you’ll never find a sale rack, unless it’s sale time. At that point, the whole store is on sale – generally there won’t be any new stock during these times. Their plan is to get rid of as much as possible, and then bring in the new lines.

The idea of the sale is tempting. I mean, who doesn’t want to get a new suit or another item of clothing for half price? If it only were as easy at that! To give you some bit of an idea, I last went to a sale at Next when I lived in the Wimbledon area – three + years ago now. I did not have a good experience. It was the first time I had ever been truly pushed out of the way by a woman who wanted to root through a pile of clothing I was standing near. I stepped back and promptly ran into someone else who was trying to get through me to the rack in front of me. At that point, I decided I had had enough and swiftly left the store. Part of me thought maybe it was because I had never been a big city dweller before, but seeing subsequent Next sales even from a distance convinced me this wasn’t the case. Where I came from, you didn’t push and shove people out of the way – even when shopping the day after Christmas or Thanksgiving!

So, when my friend told me that the Next near our work wasn’t nearly as crazy as the sales get on Oxford Street, I was tempted. I can always use new work clothes and thought maybe I might find a new shirt, or even like her, lucky girl, new shoes. So, believing her blindly, I tried my luck.

Sadly, I really shouldn’t have bothered. It wasn’t as bad as the Wimbledon shop – no one was pushing, but it wasn’t great, either. It was the end of the day, and the place was a mess.  If you didn’t know better, you would have thought the store was closing and therefore having a clearance sale. There were clothes everywhere – on the floor, hanging off hangers, on top of racks and piled in places. Even if I knew what I was looking for, I would have had trouble spotting it. It was a bit of a mess, and rather overwhelming. Still optimistic (no one was fighting me for space!), I made my way to the back of the store to have a look at what shoes might be around.

I simply don’t know how my friend found her shoes. When I had a look, there were just piles and piles of shoes in absolutely no order, just thrown around on shelves. I didn’t even really see that there were pairs together. I had these visions of trying on one, and then crawling around on the floor hunting for the other pair – as if you were getting them out of a very crowded and messy closet. Having no desire to root around, I made my way quickly back out of the store and headed back down towards the train station.

The short of it is, the Next sale would be ok, but you need to get there before anyone else, and I think you also need to know what you want. And, in some instances, you have to be prepared to push back.

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