Mumbai: Indian-American comedian Zarna Garg went to a Hermès store in Berlin this week, and ended up spending nearly as much time trying to leave its bathroom as one might expect to spend securing one of the luxury brand’s famously elusive handbags.
Garg, a Mumbai-raised comedian now based in New York, who is in Berlin for her Million Dollar Excuses comedy tour, said she was trapped inside the store’s bathroom for about an hour and 20 minutes after its sliding door refused to open. Her team and her children documented the episode while they waited on the other side, which was later posted as an Instagram Reel on 20 August.
She is a former lawyer who turned to stand-up in her 40s. Her comedy frequently draws on Indian families, immigration, marriage, and motherhood, and her 2025 memoir This American Woman became a New York Times bestseller.
Locked in the bathroom, Garg initially did what a stand-up comedian might be expected to do: turning the predicament into content. Garg joked from inside the bathroom, played with paper towels, and even fashioned them into an origami.
“We started recording thinking we’ll make a funny video about what you can do when locked in a bathroom. I made an origami village of paper towels and played games like guess how many towels I’m holding,” she wrote on Instagram.
In the video, after being stuck for more than 20 minutes, she remarked on the irony of it happening at the store of a brand so particular about perfection.
“It is so funny that a place that is so persnickety about perfection, this is happening there,” Garg said, as she sat inside waiting for the door to be opened.
The humour, however, began to wear thin as the wait stretched past an hour.
According to Garg, her team asked store managers to call the fire department when attempts to open the door failed, but the staff initially resisted because they wanted to protect the door. Garg said she was eventually asked to push it from inside as those outside worked on it with a crowbar. Firefighters ultimately helped free her.
When the door finally opened, Garg appeared visibly shaken. “Thank God there was no fire,” she said in the video as her daughter Zoya consoled her.
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‘Useless door, useless people’
What particularly angered her, she wrote, was what followed. Garg alleged that no member of the staff apologised or explained what had happened. “After an hour and 20 minutes, I make it out. No one says a word, apologises, or makes eye contact with me.
As she was leaving, an employee offered her a bottle of champagne, which she declined. “A peace offering? We declined and they closed the door behind us and locked it shut.”
The mishap came ahead of Garg’s Berlin performance on 21 August at the Punch Line Club.
Founded as a Paris harness workshop in 1837, Hermès has since grown into one of the world’s best-known luxury houses, popular for its Birkin and Kelly handbags, which are among the most coveted and are notoriously difficult to acquire.
Hermès had not publicly responded to her allegations as of Friday.
The comedian nevertheless found a punchline.
“Also how ironic that the company that makes a bag that is impossible to open and close now has a bathroom door that is impossible to open and close. Shakespearean tragedy but also so authentic. Useless bag, useless door, useless people,” she wrote.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)