only in seattle...

okay, so today at work, i was a the register, chatting with Janis and Patty, two of my coworkers and Patty was just finishing up with a customer, and I was telling her about this chick who looked like she was shoplifting in our store... and then as I looked out across the street at Westlake Plaza, I saw the craziest thing ever! And mid sentence, I stopped and was like, "Oh my gosh! Those chicks are all naked!"

And Patty is like, "what...??" and her and Janis both look across the street, and see what I see... a row of 6 ladies, wearing nothing but work aprons! facing away from us, taking pictures in a line, showing us their bare b'cheeks! it was soooooo crazy! And we just kept laughing and STARING- not because we were the least bit turned on or perverted or whatever, but because

1. We didn't know what the HECK WAS GOING ON!
2. That is so out of the ordinary
3. It was funny!
4. We were in awe of the brave cellulite clad ladies struttin' their stuff commando in a major public thoroughfare in downtown seattle!

It straight up reminded me of something out of EMPIRE RECORDS. (thanks, Renee Zellweger!)

And at first we were trying to come up with every reason we could think of as to why anyone would be doing that...

maybe a coffee barista strike?.... but wouldn't picket signs make more sense?

maybe sales were really low and they needed the attention?.... hey, negative attention is still attention, right??

maybe they were protesting something? ... I guess it was worth going nakee to do so...

Apparently, the girls were from a store in the nearby Westlake Center Mall, called Lush, which sells bath products...
so we were like,

maybe they just want to promote their product and show everyone how smooth your skin can be...


but still it amazed me! i mean, as a boss at that store, what do you say??

"Okay, team! Today we're going to go promote our store... naked. So if you'll just take off all your clothes and put on these aprons, we'll be all set to go!"

And I was so confused! Why not at least wear flesh colored bikini tops with tan boy short undies?? something at least a little modest, and less... bare. I mean, I wasn't offended... I was just so confused!! Why would anyone do that??

So then I decided to do some research and discovered that it's actually a quite common thing for LUSH to do. Here's an article about it:

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CRAZY WEDNESDAY: LUSH TUSHES GO NORTH AMERICA

Well, to really be in fashion when highlighting green issues, it seems that this season one should be in the buff. In rather more comfortable surroundings than Spencer Tunick’s volunteers endured, staff of the high street cosmetics chain Lush have been sporting their birthday suits to publicise the company’s commitment to reducing packaging.

The campaign started in the last month, when staff at 55 stores across the UK took to the streets wearing only white aprons, bearing with the words “Ask me why I’m naked”. Now the company is repeating their message in stores in the US and Canada, and plans to continue their message worldwide. On 18th August, workers at the Vancouver branch of Lush stripped off and donned their pinnies to publicise the 25.2 million tonnes of waste produced by Canadians every year, making Canada one of the highest contributors to global warming per head of population.

According to Lush, packaging is responsible for 2% of all greenhouse gases, and 8% of the world’s oil resources are used each year in producing plastics for the packaging industry. They hope that customers will take the initiative to protest about the damage done to the environment by unnecessary wastage, and avoid buying packaged goods. About 60% of the company’s products are sold “naked”, as they are able to avoid packaging by removing water from many items. As well as soaps, they sell shampoos and bubble bars in solid form, which they estimate saves on the production, transportation and disposal of about 3 million plastic bottles a year.

Lush has also announced that from next month it will replace all of its polystyrene chip and shredded paper packing with popcorn, which I think quite appropriate for a company whose product range includes a lot of foody and fruity flavours.

I hope you’ll appreciate how hard I’ve tried not to mention how peachy the staff look in their aprons. If working at Lush made my bottom look that good, I’d be down there with my curriculum vitae like a shot.

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Well, after about 15 or 20 minutes, this one cop that was patrolling the area was like, "I'm pretty sure they're breaking some law...I just don't know what to do..." and then called in for some lady cops to come and escort the ladies back to their job....clothed. Later in the day, Patty was re-telling this story to one of our customers (my first request for a Hallmark card for a same sex life partner- handled it pretty well i think!) and he was like, "Well I work over in Westlake Center and that totally makes sense now- I saw the mall manager there and he was pissed!"

After all the fiasco, Janis came up with the best explanation of it all: "WELL... ONLY IN SEATTLE!"