Putting out the welcome mat

Today we went to Toowong Village to do some shopping. In Kmart, I looked at crap clothes while Heather amused herself by playing a rally car game on the store's Playstation. We bought a new welcome mat for the front door, since it's been raining a fair bit and we've been getting wet footprints in the house.

On the way out of the shopping centre, I thought I'd have a quick look at Scribblers, the stationery shop. We still haven't organised invitations, so we'll have to do it soon. I went in looking for pre-cut cards and nice papers that might be used as overlay. We ended up looking for quite a while, holding up favourites from time to time for each other to inspect. We rested the Kmart bag holding our welcome mat on the floor while we looked.

A young sales assistant asked if we required help, but we were just browsing. Then an older woman asked if we needed help.

'No, we're just looking, thanks,' we told her, and continued our browsing. We had relatively lengthy debates over some papers as we worked out what we agreed on and how our tastes would fit together. Later on, the older woman asked once again if we needed help, and we told her once again that we were fine.

Heather got sick of the whole process and went outside after a while. I continued looking for a little bit, and then saw the older woman approaching once again. I looked up at her to smile and, I thought, rebuff what would undoubtedly be another 'can I help you?'. But, strangely, this time she gave me a really nasty look. For once in my life I thought 'nah, it can't be personal' and continued about my shopping.

I collected a few samples, bought them, and met Heather outside. She was looking kind of churlish.

'Did that bitch check your bag?' she asked.

'No, why?'

'She fucking checked mine!'

'Really, the older woman?'

'Yeah, she followed me out of the store and said: Can I just check your bag? We do bag checks from time to time. And so I showed her my bag with the mat in it, and she wanted me to move the mat around so she could see inside.'

Bag checks at a stationery shop?! This woman really acted as if Heather had stolen something. It was really irritating to me because the woman was initially quite pleasant, and only got nasty after she realised we might be lesbians. That is, after overhearing our discussions about paper colours, prints, card sizes, and wedding plans. These very specific types of discussion aren't the kind you have with a friend, I guess.

It's hard to know what the woman was thinking, but I just think she wanted to piss us off so we wouldn't come back to flaunt our queerness in her little shop. She wanted to do anything she could, anything at all, to express her disapproval. Sometimes this kind of discrimination is worse than the overt stuff, because to some extent we're prepared for the overt stuff. But not this.

So much for welcome mats.