Retail Rudeness

Sorry this happened to you. You have to understand retail. It pays crap, there is no respect or reward even for those who do their job well in most cases, and many of us look forward to the day when society is smart enough to replace all those jobs with self-serve stores so humanity can get on with using its gray matter to actually resolve serious issues. Meanwhile you have someone whose label in her work life is bra specialist. Yeah, that's got to be fulfilling. And her little underling, who doesn't even achieve those lofty heights of greatness. So really, you can't expect much. Call corporate if you want, but corporate isn't going to replace them with better, because I don't care if you put the love child of Mother Teresa and Albert Einstein in that job, the job itself will crush all heart and ambition and empathy out of anyone after awhile.

I suggest you shrug off their silly wording, move on, and hope you never end up where these two ladies are at in life. Having a non-standard body shape does not mean anything bad. Or good, for that matter. We should all take care of our health of course, but most of what we are is that gray stuff between our ears. And the more non-standard that is, the better!

Morning rant over.

In a nutshell.

I don't know if this will make you feel better, but when I was a teenager I had a HORRIBLE experience at Victoria's Secret as well. They don't properly train their associates for bra measuring and such, and they can be VERY rude and condescending.

I was in there to get some new bras with my mom, and at first the associate who was helping us was quite nice. She kept saying how pretty I was and I was flattered. Then she measured me completely wrong (40 DD, I think it was, at the time I was a 36 D. I've gained weight, and I'm STILL a 36, by the way). She said there weren't many bras there in my size, but that wasn't the bad part. She said once again that I was pretty, but then added, "Just lose this," and smacked my stomach ," and you'll be fine!" It was awful. And then she had the nerve to complain about how her manager didn't recognize her work and we should tell him what a good job she was doing! Never set foot in that store again...I was so humiliated.

I recently bought some bras from VS as I gained weight and my 36D bras were too tight. My experience was fine, but when I asked to be measured I realized they had no effin' clue. They measured me at a 36D. Haha! I told them to try again. The sales lady changed her mind the second time and said she had me at a 36DD. I said no, I will try a 38 because the 36 I'm currently in is cutting into me. Anyways the long and short of it, every bra they had me try on was a 38DD and the cups were huge (except one of the bras fit nicely). The other two I took home were 38D. Useless sales people, I virtually did all the work myself.

I would report that to corporate. That is absolutely inappropriate, and I don't care that they are working a cruddy paying job.
Victoria's Secret does not just pander to the 00 crowd, and their commentary was not necessary at all. Especially in front of you.

That's why I shop online.
BTW, every website has a size guide, just measure yourself and find out what size you are. Not rocket science.

Pause a moment and consider what these 'sizing specialists' are getting paid... I mean how much training does one need to wield a tape measure accurately?? I cringed for you reading your post but I encourage you to imagine the very people who criticized you standing before you in their (probably not VS) undies. We are all unique. Even those ladies...

I love VS but have never been fitted and don't generally talk to the staff. I just try on until one fits and is comfortable.

I am a weird shape. I have large breasts and my legs have always been thin and I am short waisted. Basically, an inverted triangle shape with most of my 5'9" height in my legs. It doesn't matter where I shop I get attitude. For a long time I really liked buying shirts at Lane Bryant. But I started getting attitude from them because I was "too skinny". I wore a size 14/16 shirt. Why was I too small? And then in other stores I got the other attitude because the buttons pulled and they "just didn't have anything above a 12". What? And pants are almost always too short too.
It's fine, the internet rocks. Shop online there is a bigger selection anyway . If they want to know why retail stores are suffering it is because customer service is terrible. People need to be kind and have common courtesy. I worked in retail for years, until I was in my early 30's. It isn't just the clerks who are rude. The customers are too. We live in a culture where people say whatever they please and think they have a right to say it. That may be true, but that doesn't mean it's ok to be rude and hurt someone's feelings.

Go to herroom.com there are great directions for measuring yourself for a bra and it even has a universal size because different bras size differently (all 34 B bras do not fit the same way). Good luck

VS is actually pretty notorious for this kind of thing. Much like Abercrombie & Fitch has received criticism for not catering to a variety of shapes and sizes, and even admittedly said they cater to "cool" (ie not fat, not poor, not of lower socio-economic status), Victoria'sSecret very specifically caters to "straight sizes" and heavily promotes beauty stigma. If you aren't thin, conventionally attractive, don't expect them to go out of their way. A bra store that only carries up to -maybe- a DD if you're lucky in select sizes and kicked a woman out for breast feeding (because that's not what breasts are for???) doesn't sit too well with most people. But their signs are pink and covered in glitter, so people still get lured in.

The best bra fitting I ever had was at the Bali/Playtex/ etc, etc outlet store at the outlet mall. They were professional and the comments the person made were matter of fact about my size and shape, not anything that made me feel denigrated. I also learned about the "four boob" from her.