On the door of a local store in our town square, there are cheerful, aspirational slogans printed in tidy, modern fonts. Among them:

“Do something with joy, or not at all.”

“Beauty is not trivial.”

“Every product should have a story.”

Inside, the vibe is curated optimism: plants, candles, linen that whispers wellness. But then… right out front on a rack by the entrance, there is a jacket.

Across the back of the jacket, in glittery, shouty block letters, it reads: “DON’T BE A LITTLE B*TCH.”

Every time I pass it, my body reacts before my brain does. A spike of heat. A tightening in the chest. It isn’t just the word. It’s the casual ugliness of it. Mean. Sexist. Performatively confrontational. And frankly, the jacket itself looks like something that’s been rejected from the wardrobe department of a local production of Grease.

What makes it worse is the location. There’s a girls’ high school right around the corner. You constantly see students in uniform walking by. Including my two godchildren.

Which means that every morning, this jacket is quietly telling a story of its own. And it is not the kind of story I imagine the founders had in mind when they wrote Every product should have a story on the front door.

Then last week, on my way to get coffee, my annoyance triumphed, and I finally went inside.

“Hey,” I said to the young man behind the counter. “Can I ask you about that jacket outside?”

He didn’t look up from his phone. “What jacket?”

“The one with the nasty slogan on the back,” I said.

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Well,” I said, “it kind of goes against the whole spirit of your store. You know. Joy.........

© Psychology Today