more than twenty two pairs of pants...

is how many I tried on today. at least, that's how many I can count in my head, rightthissecond.

I need work clothes. I need work clothes I can wear with flats, more specifically. I think that my not-wearing-heels-much has totally cramped my wearing-heels-style. my ankles have been hurting pretty much constantly, and those three-inchers aren't helping.

plus, NO ONE in my new office wears heels. NO ONE. I fully intend on doing so when I feel like it, but I don't want to be "the girl who wears heels." I think you understand.

I'm so frustrated that I tried on all of these pants and bought NONE that I'm thinking about going to jcrew's sale and splurging. I want these, I think. In navy. and maybe in khaki too? I don't have to get reallyreally dressed up (I mean, most of these folks wear white tennies with their khakis) but I like to look cute, in general. So yeah. And le sigh.

oh, and. in my shopping today, something happened that will leave me writing a letter--I went to target, natch, and asked the kind folks to please replace my watch battery. y'see, I bought it march 1st, and it stopped working three weeks later. the watch itself is FINE, but the battery was out-o'-juice.

the watch is similar to this one, only it's black and crocodile. and I really like it.

so anyway, to be concise--they wouldn't replace my battery for free, they wouldn't let me talk to the store manager and customer service couldn't help me either. and they got pissy when I said I wanted the receipt and the packaging from the battery I just bought.

I fully realize this cost me like $3.24 and ten minutes of my time, and my time is worth more than that. However...

-in ideal-land for them, if I hadn't bought the battery the next best thing would've been me exchanging my perfectly good watch for another perfectly good watch--albeit one that has a battery that's been running sense it arrived in the store, and that might die tomorrow.
-ALL of their watches are tick-tick-ticking while on the shelves. and watches do not have a shelf life...
-so their batteries are being wasted....
-and batteries? they are TERRIBLE for the environment. even disposing of them correctly doesn't fix all the problems...

-so they are unnecessarily allowing a product to exhaust its useful life while chilling on a shelf (I mean, we're talking about a watch here, not fruit or cereal or a candle or whatever) AND in doing so are using valuable energy and resources so that consumers can see that their watch does, indeed, work...

which makes me want to know:
-why aren't all retailers, everywhere, pulling the pin so the watches don't run? and furthermore, why don't we sell watches without batteries thereby allowing for the fullest usage of the battery?

I mean, I *know* I got a target watch. I know. They're cheap and you get what you pay for. And this isn't about the three bucks, it's about the notion--we'd all be pissed if our lightbulbs were "used" or if two thirds of our shampoo wasn't in the allegedly new bottle.

so I'm going to write a letter. and encourage them to be the pioneers in a more enviro-friendly, economical way to working. and alert them to this issue--likely, they don't even realize it's happening. plenty of people wouldn't bother to replace the battery at all. so I get it. But this is annoying and wasteful and frustrating.

but on a happier note, target now sells disposable bamboo plates! and they now sell some pretty kickin' recycled office stuff too. I like it!