First Sign of Winter?

There is a man shopping, he’s looking for an item. He asks for a sweater that zips down the middle.

STOP!

Okay, can you list three real pieces of clothing which fulfill this criteria in a Men’s store? A sweater and it zips down the middle. Think about it. Okay, time’s up.

1. A hoodie, right? Nope.
2. A zip cardigan? Nope, wrong again.
3. What else is there? Some half-zip, mock-turtle neck mishap? Or maybe a sweater-vest which zips down the middle, because that’s trendy, and oh-so awesome, right? Not.

Whatever it is, we didn’t have what he was looking for. It’s not what he was talking about. So what was this? Some item that doesn’t yet exist, which he hopes someone will eventually design one day? If it’s that revolutionary, he might have to design it himself, or he’ll never find it. There are certainly only so many options when it comes to a sweater which zips down the middle.

Customer Types: FashioNOTstas, Tailor-Made

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That Shirt

To prove once again how you parent and how you teach makes your children just like you–may it be manners or lack of manners, common sense or lack thereof–I meet a family who left me unexcited. The son first asks me to find a hoodie or pullover or jumper, however you may wish to call it, which was the last of its kind. I did my best, but since it was the last one, I really couldn’t find anymore.

So I return, telling them I was unsuccessful, then the son points up at a visual display saying, “Do you have more of that shirt?”
I turn, only to find the visual display is shirts, and being at the corner of a wall, there is also another wall next to it full of mannequins wearing shirts. There are roughly one dozen shirts where he’s pointing. I look back at the son, who is a teenager, and ask, “Which shirt?”
“That shirt!” The father and sister also raise up their hands. They are standing physically two to five feet apart, yet all their hands go up and point straight forward without a detectable angle, nothing to help me draw an invisible dotted line to meet at a single point at the wall. Their wild aim would seem to point at three distinctly different shirts. Maybe one of them is cockeyed, maybe one of them is nearsighted or farsighted, has a crooked elbow or bent fingers.  Of course, they speak and look at me as if I’m the dumb one. So I vaguely reach up, pointing at shirts, “This one?”
“No, that one!”
“This one?” Now I’m making my way down the line. It’s like I’m in a police line up with idiots trying to find who committed the murder, and they have no idea what they’re talking about.
“No, the other one.”
Like seriously, you’re standing thirty feet away from the wall, vaguely pointing at three different coordinates, and I feel like the clown running with the target, trying to catch the ball for the queen so she never misses. Of course, I’m not in Wonderland, am I?

Even more sad, when we finally find the correct shirt, it is yet again, the last of its kind–as this family prove to be mutants who have the ability to find items that no longer exist–and they are left sighing, unable to buy anything, because they don’t want anything we actually have that would fit their son, only the things that don’t fit him which we are sold out of.

Customer Types: The Dumb, ESP, Lowered Expectations

Fashion meets the Slob

I’m at the front of the store greeting customers, trying to keep the entrance organized and clean-looking. A couple walks in. The guy is short and fat, his head was shaved roughly two weeks ago. To say it’s stubbly is an understatement. He is wearing a plain, gray tank-top and black, long-long basketball shorts–they look like women’s cropped pants–and slippers (flip-flops. the rubber kind). He looks at me up and down, and says something to his girlfriend, whom turns to look at me and they both chuckle, turn and leave the store. They’ve only walked about two-feet into the store before they leave.

I say flatly, “Good-bye.” I make sure to visually acknowledge the fact his girlfriend is wearing a black hoodie, which is tight enough to show she has at least two rolls of fat, cut-off denim shorts revealing her voluminous thighs and similar slippers (flip-flops, the rubber kind).

Gosh, I must have looked like a slob to them since I was dressed in a dress shirt, slacks and clean boots.

Customer Type: Lowered Expectations