As you know, and as my best friends know, I've been very vocal about my desire to own a pair of scalloped shorts for quite some time time now. I've been lusting after them for about a year now.
This post is about why I now hate H&M, and why my best friends are awesome.
(If you aren't in the mood for a long rant, feel free to skip to the photos.)
It was my birthday last month and I went out to celebrate with my two best gals, and neither of them had gifts for me at the time. One was en route and the other wasn't out yet. When my friend Ellie asked me what I wanted and I mentioned the scalloped shorts from the H&M Conscious Collection she promised to get them for me.
The collection came out on April 14th, two days after my birthday, so Ellie drove to the mall to get them at H&M. When she didn't see them on the floor, she decided to ask a sales associated if maybe not everything from the collection was out yet. The first two people had no idea what she was talking about, then finally a manager told her they would be getting some more things in by the weekend.
Ellie and I went back that weekend and I, not immediately seeing them, went to ask. The sales girl I spoke to was not at all interested in helping me. First I showed her a photo of the shorts on my iPhone, and she told me that if it was online, then it wouldn't be in the store. When I explained it was part of the collection that had just come out, she told me if I didn't see it, they didn't have it. I started to ask her another question when she just walked away from me.
I found someone else to speak to and asked if maybe they could contact another store in the area and have them sent to this one, she told me if they did have them, I'd have to go there myself, and then walked away.
I left feeling really put-out, and I was feeling bad that Ellie had driven to the mall twice in a few days for me and had no shorts to show for it. She just gave me a gift card so I would at least have something.
When I got home I called other H&Ms. The people I spoke to on the phone had no idea what I was talking about. One of my conversations went something like this:
Me: Hi, I was wondering if you had the scalloped hem shorts from the new collection in stock?
H&M Girl: (to someone on her end) Do you know what a scalloped short is? (the reply was no)
(to me) You mean it has pictures of scallops on it?
***At this point, I thought this girl was crazy, because I was imagining the little round white blobs you eat. But after the fact I realized she was probably (hopefully) thinking about the shell.***
Me: No, the hem is wavy.
H&M Girl: No, we don't have anything like that.
Raw Scallops Scallop Shell
I got similar responses from all the other H&Ms I called, so I decided I'd just have to get them in New York.
When I walked in to the NY Store (I can't remember which one) I spotted the scalloped blazer right away, but couldn't find the shorts. I spoke to another sales associate, this time a man, and he looked around a little, and told me he'd seen them yesterday, but didn't know where they'd moved to.
Eventually I spotted one pair amongst all the other regular hem shorts. A size bigger than I'd been hoping to find, but I scooped them up and tried them on just the same. Silly me, I decided to find other employee to ask if they could maybe look up in their computer if there were anymore pairs of the shorts in stock, but I got the same old "if it's not on the floor..." response.
But H&M is a big store. Like three floors. Anyone could pick something up and carry it around and then leave it somewhere else (heck, I did that day!) and if they could tell me "yes, we do have a few more pairs in stock" then I'd know it wouldn't be a waste of time to search for them.
And again, no one was willing to contact any other H&Ms for me, or even offer me directions to them. Not that I needed directions because I have an iPhone, but still.
The customer service was terrible. Across the state. Across
two states. Is their company policy simply to be as unhelpful as possible?
Needless to say, I bought the shorts that were a size too big anyway. And the blazer too, for good measure.
As for my other amazing best friend, she got me the
black scalloped shorts from Urban Outfitters.
I like the both, the black ones are super short and sexy, the beige ones are a bit more modest, and maybe I can get away with wearing them to work...?
The Rundown
Top Gap -
Scalloped Blazer H&M -
Jeans TJMaxx -
Sandals Seychelles Gypsy -
Bracelet (orange) Kohls -
Bracelets (gold) The Cavernous Jewelry Box -
Ring Lia Sophia -
Hat NY&Co. -
Nail Color Dashing Diva Miranda's Law*
*The namesake of the nail color is actually that of Miranda from Sex and the City, and Dashing Diva is the nail salon where we went in NY - I'd never been to a place that had it's own line of nail colors!
