This reminds me of an unpleasant dressing room experience I had at a Zara in Germany. In the US, stores are generally extremely laid back about how many items you take into the dressing room (I've been in AT or ATL dressing rooms with 25 items ;-)) but German stores tend to have very strict policies, which makes shopping much more stressful.
Since I don't have a lot of opportunity shopping at Zara (we don't have one in Seattle), I tend to go crazy when I'm finally in a store and try on tons of things. So last fall I was in Cologne/Germany, happily piling clothes over my arm (there also is no one in German stores who hovers around you offering "may I start a room for you") and finally walk to the dressing room with at least a dozen tops, dresses and jackets. Only to be told that I can only take 6 items at a time. Ok, so I ask if they would hold the rest outside the dressing room for me so I can swap them out later. They grudgingly hang them on a rack but said they wouldn’t guarantee that they would still be there in 10 minutes. Sigh. I try things on as fast as I can, decide to buy several of the first batch of 6, and then say I’m ready to swap out. Fortunately the other items are still hanging on the rack. But now they refuse to hold the items for me that I already tried on and want to buy. They tell me I have to keep them with me if I want to buy them, they won’t hold them even for 10 minutes. Double sigh. I tell them that they are close to losing me as a customer – after all, I was already committed to buying those things, and really wanted to try more things, but how can I keep both the items-to-buy with me and the new things in my dressing room if the limit is 6… we had a little standoff about this. In the end they hung the items on a rack again “without guarantees”, I pulled another real fast round of trying things on, found more stuff to buy, and luckily found all the items I wanted still waiting for me. I was pretty pissed at their consumer-un-friendly rules, but hey, I was their captive, and in the end I walked out with a big bag of goodies and have enjoyed my purchases since.
I’m going back to Cologne (and Zara!!) in June, so I’m already bracing myself
And the moral of the tale is: Our YLF Zara gathering will definitely have to happen in the US.
