'I can aid you through the night'

I promised to share various humiliations my career choices have caused me so here is one of my all time favourite jobs.

Picture the scene, two weeks before Christmas an agency you are registered to calls and offers you £12 for an 'easy' bit of promotional work. Money is good, location fine and bonus of free parking. "Yes" I eagerly reply. Fast forward to the thursday of that week when I have somehow found myself wearing an ill-fitting t-shirt printed in large letters with the phrase 'I can aid you through the night'. You will be surprised to know I was not then instructed to loiter around the male toilets in sleasy bars or outside a strip club come closing and later hand over my earnings to my pimp (potentially less soul destroying than what was to come). No I was sent into a large retail chemist in one of the cities busiest shopping centres on December 19th to promote and increase sales of anti-snoring nasal strips!!!! Stop laughing this is actually my life(or was).

As I tried dutifully to hand out free samples and engage people in conversations about their sleeping habits(grim enough) I was also asked frequent medical questions.
"what did I recommend for flatulence?"
"why is the tena lady pad size I wanted out of stock" (I was tempted to tell her it was due to the rise of people pissing themselves laughing at my t-shirt but she didn't look the humourous sort)
And the 'funny'guys asking to be pointed in the direction of the xxl condoms. Heard it all before mate!
Seriously people have no shame, they walk within 50yards of a chemist and develop an inability to hold in their symptoms.

Anyway back to my own humiliation. If things weren't degrading enough as the 20th hairy nostriled man showed me his throat( can't help snoring I have a narrow passage) or up his nose (he has a cold) I saw a former colleague walking towards me. This was not a particularly unlikely situation as having been former crew of an airline and the shopping centre being located 5minutes away, in the week before Christmas the liklihood of crew popping in to pick up gifts was fairly high. I just hadn't considered this possibility.

In normal (i.e better dressed situations) I would have been delighted to see her. But as she walked smiling towards me in my former uniform I cringed. I figured if I could keep my back against the shelf and do some muttering about instore beauty promotion I could avoid any major humiliation. Five minutes passed  and we caught up- She was well, husband had flu, son shepherd in nativity, popping to Primark for Christmas jammies, I was fine, hadn't finished shopping, the usual. On the cusp of saying goodbye I relaxed a little, humiliation averted, as an short woman beckoned me to ask about the location of cystitis treatments, I made the fatal mistake of turning my back on colleague.

I saw her supress a slight smirk but in true hostie style said nothing. It didn't matter the damage was done. I offered her a free strip for her congested husband and we forced a laugh.

Agency called "Want to do some more strip promotion on the 23rd" Did I hell!

And this is only the beginning!