Nice and Nasty

A well-known police interrogation technique is to have two officers, one a “Mr Nice”, the other a “Mr Nasty”, interview the suspect simultaneously. The idea is, if the prisoner knows himself to be guilty, he will eventually want to unburden himself to one of the interrogators. Exactly which one depends on his personality. A submissive type, for example, would tend to confide in Mr Nasty, while the extrovert would eventually empathise with Mr Nice.

This is a tried and trusted method of arriving at the truth, and one which I believe should be applied to other situations. And where is truth more in demand than in a clothes shop? How often, for instance, do we delude ourselves into thinking that a crap tie or suit is in fact fashionable? Who is there to point out the error of our ways? Having a spouse or partner along is no use, as they tend merely to back up our initial (and often erroneous) impressions of the clothing.

In my opinion, therefore, Mr Nice and Mr Nasty shop assistants should be employed. Having emerged from the fitting room, one would face them, and they would immediately go into their double act.

“That suit sucks DICK - like the person wearing it.”
“No, that suit is just so you. It makes you look like such a hunk.”
“Yeah, a hunk of raw meat. I’ll bet the only reason you've chosen trousers with turn-ups is so that they'll catch the dripping spunk after you've finished WANKING OFF over pictures of little boys.”
“Don’t listen. Those trousers are tailored exquisitely. They highlight your crotch perfectly”.
“It's a good job those trousers are so baggy - they conceal the fact of your DIMINUTIVE DICK.”

And so on.

Eventually, the combination of their praise and scorn would force you to plumb the depths of your psyche and come up with your true feelings re: the suit, in much the same way as a murderer's confession can be extracted from the slough of his despond by stick and carrot. Thus the purchaser would get true value for money. And as an added benefit, I'm sure such sales procedures would ensure that flared trousers were never again inflicted upon us.