I shook hands with Paris Hilton today.
PARIS. HILTON.
Apparently one of the perks of working at Urban Outfitters in downtown Toronto is that I occasionally get the pleasure of being in the same room as celebrities. Liv Tyler was in earlier this month, David Schwimmer came in last week during the film fest, and AJ from the Backstreet Boys was in both yesterday and today. We also get some Canadians. Apparently Rachel McAdams comes in every now and then, and I've seen that same little Portuguese girl VJ from MTV Canada twice in the last couple weeks.
But seriously, Paris Hilton. I don't even need a punch line.
I was working at the register at the very end of the counter when she came up to me with her arms full of stuff and very politely asked if she could leave her things on the back counter so she could keep shopping. I already knew she was in the store, but I seriously didn't expect her to talk to me. I kept on working and she made a couple more stops to drop things off- crazy giant armfuls of multiples of the same things, identical t-shirts, 5 or 6 of the same necklace, something like 10 or 15 of the same earring holder in different colours.
Then she came up with 4 of the lomography cameras and apologized for taking up all our space and asked me, "Do you guys, like, ship? Cause I'm here filming a movie, and I want to send a lot of this back to my house in LA."
I stammered something like, "Uh... yeah, I'm sure we can arrange something."
She replied, "Great! Well I want to get some more stuff, so I can just leave this here right?"
"Of course," I say.
"Thanks so much. What is your name?"
"Anthony."
"I'm Paris, nice to meet you."
And then we shook hands. Her hand was tiny, soft and warm and she smelled faintly of marijuana.
It was all so surreal. I felt star struck even though I totally hate her. Simultaneously I was impressed that she was actually much, much nicer to me than most customers are.
She then continued her shopping spree, buying just about everything in the Housewares department small enough to fit into a basket. The guy in housewares and a manager took turns relaying full baskets down to me and I spent a good hour scanning and bagging everything. We had to do separate transactions because it was so much stuff and another cashier took over for me when I went on break near the end of it.
I didn't see her again after she introduced herself to me. Some guy dealt with paying the store and ultimately decided that shipping so much stuff directly from the store to LA didn't make sense. Her driver (who looked a lot like Carl Lagerfeld) pulled up at the back of the store and he and the assistant guy and a couple managers carried most of the bags to the car. The driver came back about an hour later for the rest of it.
I guestimate that she spent about $5500. I'm sure that is nothing to her, but it really was an enormous volume of items. She also didn't get the discount her assistant said she always gets, but we did give her a bunch of "I love Paris" (where "love" is represented by a graphic of the Eiffel Tower) medallion necklaces free because they were clearance write-offs anyways and 30% off a handful of t-shirts with the same design.
Her strangest purchase: About twenty large candy dishes/ash trays in the shape of large hand-guns
Her funniest purchase: A "Don't Free Paris" T-shirt
Her least practical purchase considering she doesn't live in this city or country: Two large stretched canvas prints.
The whole thing was a lot of fun, even though the first two transactions were so large they caused two of our registers to run out of memory and crash and the resulting chaos created a line up so long it seemed more like late December than September. When it was all said and done my manager thanked me for handling it so well, especially because I am still kind of new and lauded me for remaining so calm, even as our registers crashed and the baskets piled up. I gave her one of my "meh, no problem" shrugs. I really just feel bad that Paris (we're on a first name basis now) caused such a commotion that nobody even really noticed that AJ from the Backstreet Boys had come back.
Poor guy.
Keep on Tranglin,
Anthony
15 comments:
was it hard to tell it was her without night vision?
Maybe you'll be "discovered" someday.
I can't believe you're not famous just by this post.
I still hate her, even if she was civil. Blech. I sneezed and what came out was something like Paris, once. I went to the doctor and he found that bean I stuck up there twenty years ago.
This is the craziest story ever. Also, even though it sounds like something I would say, that wasn't me up there.
Nick, just barely. She was wearing a hoodie which cast a bit of a shadow on her face. That helped.
Ubie, Are you suggesting I make a sex tape?
Fritz, Me either, I mean common, who does a guy gotta shake hands with around here to get a little media attention?
Nick 2, I know, I was there. Also, though I momentarily did think it was you, clicking on the name quickly proved it was Nick AKA Boots.
sorry for the mix up
i just added my last initial to avoid further confusion..again sorry about that
No worries,I was never actually confused. You didn't really need to do that.
My last initial is S. too.
Yeah, but nobody likes you.
Good point.
this WOULD happen to you.
oi.
Holy crap Anthony! You're famous!! That's awesome!
ps - I finally have the internet at home! Go me!
ha ha - I beat you.
you know, Paris will be partying at The Guvernment on the 20th... maybe if you go she'll remember you and you guys can happily grind together!
Post a Comment