(no subject)
May. 17th, 2003 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katallisonOK, gals and pals, it's time for a little pop quiz, so sit up straight, put away your gum, and pay attention!
Now--imagine that you are a salesperson in a retail store selling a reasonably big-ticket furniture item such as ... oh, let's say, mattresses. A customer enters the store, and tells you upfront "I'm just looking right now, to get a sense of what's available in various price ranges." Do you:
___ a. Say, "That's fine, take your time, let me know if you have questions," and then hover at a tactful distance, allowing the customer to peruse the stock in a leisurely fashion, perhaps tossing out a bit of info now and then about the features of the various mattresses, but otherwise giving the customer a bit of time and breathing room? OR:
___ b. Clamp onto the customer like a freakin' pit bull, drag her over to the most expensive mattresses in the store, insist she try each of them out, and when she mentions a desired price range considerably lower than twelve hundred dollars, give her the stink-eye and strongly imply that she might as well sleep in a refrigerator carton under the bridge, but huffily show her the cheaper items, and then when she begins saying, "Well, OK, I'll need to think this over," swing right into the high-pressure close-the-deal stuff of "When should we arrange delivery?" and "Would you like the extended financing?" until the customer, feeling panicked, starts babbling all sorts of obviously lame and contrived excuses (forgotten dental appointments, a sudden case of the flu, grandma's funeral) so that she can flee, hands flapping, still babbling, sweating profusely?
I mean, OK, selling mattresses has got to be an awful job, but jeee-zus. I shall never in this life enter that store again, even if the only alternative was to pull a Benton Fraser and sleep on the floor in a freakin' bedroll.
[edited to add: And yeah, I could have told her (politely) to back the hell off, but really, my script for the day was "Kat goes to look at some stupid mattresses," *not* "The Very Special Episode in Which Kat Discovers the Miracle of Assertiveness." Bleah. God, I hate shopping.]
Now--imagine that you are a salesperson in a retail store selling a reasonably big-ticket furniture item such as ... oh, let's say, mattresses. A customer enters the store, and tells you upfront "I'm just looking right now, to get a sense of what's available in various price ranges." Do you:
___ a. Say, "That's fine, take your time, let me know if you have questions," and then hover at a tactful distance, allowing the customer to peruse the stock in a leisurely fashion, perhaps tossing out a bit of info now and then about the features of the various mattresses, but otherwise giving the customer a bit of time and breathing room? OR:
___ b. Clamp onto the customer like a freakin' pit bull, drag her over to the most expensive mattresses in the store, insist she try each of them out, and when she mentions a desired price range considerably lower than twelve hundred dollars, give her the stink-eye and strongly imply that she might as well sleep in a refrigerator carton under the bridge, but huffily show her the cheaper items, and then when she begins saying, "Well, OK, I'll need to think this over," swing right into the high-pressure close-the-deal stuff of "When should we arrange delivery?" and "Would you like the extended financing?" until the customer, feeling panicked, starts babbling all sorts of obviously lame and contrived excuses (forgotten dental appointments, a sudden case of the flu, grandma's funeral) so that she can flee, hands flapping, still babbling, sweating profusely?
I mean, OK, selling mattresses has got to be an awful job, but jeee-zus. I shall never in this life enter that store again, even if the only alternative was to pull a Benton Fraser and sleep on the floor in a freakin' bedroll.
[edited to add: And yeah, I could have told her (politely) to back the hell off, but really, my script for the day was "Kat goes to look at some stupid mattresses," *not* "The Very Special Episode in Which Kat Discovers the Miracle of Assertiveness." Bleah. God, I hate shopping.]
(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-17 04:06 pm (UTC)You know, that reminds me of how on a vacation after a few experiences with hovering supermarket employees in the US (who also creeped me out with their sort of fake pod-people cheerfulness, since I'm used to supermarket employees who don't consider playacting cheerfulness to be part of their lousy underpaid job) I used to make sort of strategic plans before entering a store in order to avoid contact, and how I worked on looking as competent and organized as possible (despite being in a new and unfamilar store each time) to not attract their attention...