The drudgery of uniform shopping......

Let’s talk about something a little different today……it starts with uniform shopping. I don’t think I’m alone when I say I hate spending money on work clothes. When I first started in the restaurant business a few decades back in the previous millennium, we still wore traditional waitress uniforms. You had to go to a store that carried them, they were the old typical waitress dress, they came in many colors, we wore black, with white piping around the color and pockets, they were made of an indestructible fabric, nothing stained them, I’m pretty sure they would melt, before they caught on fire, and they were pretty reasonable in price.

Shortly thereafter, uniforms started to change, women started wearing slacks and shirts, or regular skirts and blouses. Then polo shirts became popular, and you usually bought them from the restaurant, that would keep a supply of them on hand.

Now we’re into black slacks and either white or black button down shirts. These you have to buy at a regular store, and pay regular prices. We hate doing that!!!!!

Thennnnnn….a friend introduced me to thrift store shopping. I had always pictured these places being filled with junk. I could not have been more wrong in my thinking. Especially when you learn how all their specials work. First of all, on any given day, they have a sign telling you what color tag is the “color of the day.” For instance everything marked with a green tag, is 50% off for that day. Cool! If you shop on Friday or Saturday, again with the color coded tags, you can get 5 for 5. So if the specified color is blue, you can get anything with a blue tag for a dollar, as long as you buy 5 items. You can get 2 pairs of black pants, 2 black shirts and a tie for $5.00! You now have 2 uniforms for less than it would cost to buy a tie at a typical retail store. You can’t beat that! Especially since these clothes are gonna go through a lot of wear and tear…..it’s a guarantee that things will get spilled on them…even if you are the neatest person in the world, these clothes are gonna go through hell.

So Yay! For the thrift stores, and thank you for saving us hundreds of dollars in uniform costs.

P.S. I buy all my clothes at thrift stores now. Where else can you get a Calvin Klein jacket for $3.00? (It would have been $6.00, but we had a 50% off coupon) This jacket originally sold for $100.00, I looked it up in the internet.