Tuesday, September 14, 2010

I can't make this shit up

The other day I was having the strangest interaction with some customers, the sort of conversation that makes you want to give up on humanity.

So this couple was looking at a piece, let's call it a credenza, and wanted to know if it came in a lighter stain. I know for a fact it does not, but, playing the retail game where if you answer too quickly you lose credibility, I said "I don't think so, but let me double check." While I was thumbing through the catalog, the woman started telling me how her table is lighter, so that piece MUST be available in a lighter stain. "Did you get your table here?" I asked. "Is it from this same company?"

"No." she said. She had gotten it from our competitor's store. "Is it the same kind of wood?" I asked. "No." she said. She was not getting what I was getting at.

I found the page in the catalog with that particular furniture collection. "See, these look lighter" she said. "Well, each piece is different, this is a picture, that is the real product," I tried remind her. This is the sort of person that you dread doing special orders for because they can barely understand what is in front of them, much less an idea from a catalog or a drawing.

I started looking at my computer, thumbing through the inventory of similar items while she and her male companion flipped through the catalog. There's where it got good. They found a picture in the table of contents of the table from the collection. "This one!" they said "This one is lighter! " I looked at the picture. They flipped back and forth from the table of contents picture to the picture in the catalog. They were the same picture, but the one in the table of contents was enlarged. THE EXACT SAME PICTURE.

I gave up. Luckily, I had been helping some customers that were serious and capable of thought before Dumb and Dumber started pestering me, so I was perfectly justified in walking away from them.

See?? You cannot make that up.

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