First, I have an old man who is looking for two cuts of denim, one we carry, one we don’t. One is a high-rise, especially made for conservative men. The other is a higher-rise, but also baggy. We can call it Baggy. Well I show him to the high-rise we carry in-store, telling him the Baggy is only online.
A small, tiny woman gets my attention while I’m still helping the man. The woman asks me, “Hello, I can looking for a boot-cut,” she pauses for a long time, “For women.” Well that’s helpful. Suddenly, another small, tiny woman appears. I ask if they are looking for dress pants or jeans. They look at me blankly. So I take them to the denim, and they say they want the other option. At this time, most of our dress pants are on sale, including the boot-cut style.
I ask, “What size are you looking for?”
“One-petite.”
“We don’t carry that size in the store, they do carry it online. Our smallest size in-store is usually two-short…”
“Okay, two-short.”
“I”m sorry, these pants have been on sale for a long time, and all these pants are in larger sizes.”
“Do you have it any place else?”
“We do have some non-sale pants,” so I walk to another wall to show them the dress pants we do have in their size. Of course, these dress pants are flared-leg.
“I don’t want flare, I want boot-cut.”
“All the boot-cut are on sale.”
“Where are they?”
“We just came from there. We don’t have your size.”
“Here is a two-short.”
“This is flare-leg.”
“I don’t want flare, I want boot-cut.”
“We don’t have your size in boot-cut, only in the flare.”
“I want boot-cut.”
Anything I say, only gets a reply of, “I want boot-cut.” So I decide to walk away.
I find the old man looking at the lowest, tightest fitting jeans we have, which is entirely different from what he asked for.
I take him back to our high-rise denim.
“Where is the Baggy?”
“We don’t carry it in-store anymore. It is only available on-line. We do have a loose-style over here which is similar to the Baggy.”
“So that’s where the Baggy is?”
“No, it’s similar to the Baggy.”
“So where is the Baggy?”
“It’s only available online.”
“So what is that?” He points at the loose-style.
“It’s the loose-style.”
“Where is the Baggy?”
“We don’t have any, but the loose-style is the closest to it.” Then I walked away. I can only take so much redundancy. How do these people find the doors to get out of their own homes?
Customer Types: The Blind, The Deaf, The Dumb, Micromanagement, The Questioner