Waffles vs Thermals (the surface issue)

I am not above buying something simply because it becomes someone else, so when David Eng came to church looking notably dashing in grey waffle shirt recently (worn under a printed logo T), I decided I could use a grey waffle shirt as well. The weather is cool, I reasoned, and it will be a nice layering piece.

When informed of my decision, Alvin squinted a little to indicate unfamiliarity with the term (or perhaps to question whether I had mispoken) and asked, ""What's a waffle shirt?"

Thus began a protracted (and occasionally vitriolic) debate over whether I was in search of a waffle shirt, or a "thermal." Alvin insisted that a long sleeve knit with the waffle pattern is a "thermal," while I maintained that said pattern constitutes a waffle shirt, hence the name. In China (and here in America), many shirts lacking that specific knit pattern are sold as "thermals," a term which denotes function, not style. Similarly, a shirt with a waffle pattern isn't necessarily a "thermal;" it need only sport the gentle, boxy ribbing that befits the name.

So Alvin met me at the mall recently, for a dual shopping/Ryan Conferido-sighting. I found a nice grey waffle shirt in one store, but it was for women; I asked the salesperson if they carried a similar shirt for men. Negative. Sensing his moment of vindication at hand, Alvin picked up the shirt and, with uncommon alacrity, asked, "So what would you call this shirt? A 'waffle shirt'?"

The worker, bless his ignorant heart, responded, "You mean a thermal?"

Sweet was the triumphant look on Alvin's face as those words alighted from the salesman's lips. "He said it's a thermal. He knows fashion--he works in the industry!"

My response, albeit a bit shameful in retrospect, holds a measure of truth. My eyebrows knit themselves together in a superior scowl, as I angrily replied, "What does he know? He's just an Express worker--who makes minimum wage. Don't make him out to be the end-all-be-all, gospel-truth-speaking arbitrator of fashion." [One of my literature professors once said that the power to name things is the power to control them. Perhaps that is why we argued so vehemently over such a petty issue...then again, who wants the power to control waffle shirts?]

Treating the retail worker like a walking fashion dictionary is bit like seeking the gastronomic opinions of someone just because he is a fry cook at the local fast food franchise. "What's the difference between french fries and the pommes frites sold by Parisian street vendors," you might ask him (a world of difference, from everything I've heard). And he would likely shrug his shoulders, and say "pommes frites? Never heard of 'em. You mean french fries?" The salesperson at the GAP and the cashier at McDonald's weren't hired because of their expertise in their respective fields of employment. They hold their positions not because they have degrees from the Culinary Institute of America, nor because their runway show took the world by storm at last year's Paris Fashion Week, but by virtue of the fact that they are willing to accept low wages for relatively low skilled labor. The reply of the worker, while providing a dubious sort of "evidence" for Alvin's argument, was by no means a coup d'état to mine. It had the "man-on-the-street" type of credibility, but not the "couture guru Carson Kressley" type.

Not to belabor this point, but the sophistry used in the aforementioned argument brought no small amount of vexation to me. If you approached the typical retail worker, and for a shirt with an interior-contrast collar and cuff, a top with a biased print pattern, or slingback kitten heels, she would likely give you the same blank stare as if you had spoken to her in an African click language. Most major department stores aren't much better. I asked a worker at Macy*s once if they had a certain DKNY gradient-dyed, hidden placket, short sleeve shirt in stock, and she had no idea what I was talking about.

In sum, people who work in an industry are not necessarily expert in that industry, and may not be the keepers of its jargon; they cannot always be relied upon to split hairs over the difference between Angora goat wool and Angora rabbit wool, or between french fries and pommes frites.