FashBlog.com

by Christina VanGinkel

This must be my week for complaints. Shopping with my daughter over the weekend, we stopped at our local JC Penney's to purchase underwear fro my grandson. We had a bit more shopping to do first, but never gave a thought to the underwear as we figured we would just pick it up on our way to the register. Imagine our surprise as we looked for the underwear and there was none. I do not mean that the rack was empty; I mean the store did not carry any, none whatsoever in any style. We looked high and low by ourselves first, as we quickly found the little girls underwear in the sizes we were looking for, toddler's sizes two, three, or even a three-four. We gave up our solitary search and headed to the nearest sales associate. She came to help us look, and when she could not find any either, she went in search of her manager.

The manager's answer shocked me. The store did not carry any. Why, I asked, would the store carry little girls but not little boys? We could not get a definite answer but she speculated that the person in charge of ordering did not think boys that small were potty trained. First, yes, little boys do become toilet trained, and secondly even some older boys are in those sizes until they are five or six years old. In addition, come on, underwear was as basic an item of clothing as I could imagine! With shopping in our area limited to only a few stores, this was potentially a big issue. I asked the manager how to file a complaint, and asked if she could, or would plan to offer these sizes in the future. She had to take the issue up with her boss, she informed me.

From there, we headed to Kmart. They also do not carry the needed underwear in the necessary sizes. They did carry them in the little girls. Finally, we stopped at Wal-Mart. We knew they carried the regular briefs as we had purchased them there before. They had the size we needed, and we did purchase two packs. We had not initially gone to Wal-Mart though because she had been hoping to find the boxer briefs, which go down the leg a short distance. With the hot, humid weather we had been having, she wanted the longer fabric to keep his legs from chafing. Even though he is not a heavy child, his typical chubby toddler legs were prone to rubbing. As she was heading out of town to work later in the week, she hoped that she could swing back by a store she had visited a few weeks back in Arkansas. The small store she had been in had carried them, but she had not picked them up, figuring that she would be able to get them locally back home. Who knew that purchasing such a basic clothing item for a toddler would be such a run around?

Just a note to all the people who place orders as part of their jobs for clothing stores that carry toddler clothing. Boys do toilet train, and they do require underwear. Make life a bit easier for other mothers and order some. You will be surprised at how fast they fly off the shelves!