How rude can people be? In every retail business and store there has to be some understanding about etiquette when walking in and shopping. Case in point; you would not walk into a record store and ask where you can buy records. You don’t interrupt a salesman who is trying to sell a dishwasher to someone by saying “you can buy it down the street for $50 cheaper.” And you don’t try to sell your sportscards to a customer inside a sportscard store.
Here is a beauty which just happened today. As you probably know I own a sportscard and memorabilia store in Ventura, California. We sell lots of memorabilia and lots of autographs. We have about 1000 signed items in the store. Today, in the heart of the Christmas holiday season when joy should be spread a well dressed, and apparently well-heeled older woman walks in.
She explains she and her family are trying to buy a Brett Favre signed football for her grandson and they decided to ask my expert opinion.
“We know you are the expert so we wanted to get the advice from the horse’s mouth so to speak,” she says.
At this point I’m expecting her to ask me if I have a Favre signed ball or could get one. But no, wait. She does not. Instead, she lays down three pieces of paper printouts from three different web sites of other companies.
“We went on the Internet and we found these three signed footballs, one for $249, one for $299 and the other a lot more at $379,” says the woman. “Which of the three do you think we should buy from?”
It took all of my self control not to throw her out of my store. She came to me as an expert on where to buy something from another company. Did she ask me first, “do you have a Brett Favre signed football or can you get me one,” or even, “can you beat these prices?” No, she asks me what other Internet company she should purchase from.
This is like walking into an Italian restaurant and asking the owner “can you recommend a place which serves really good Italian food?” Or, like walking up to a Chevy dealer and asking “can you recommend a good Chevy dealer?”
It is called common courtesy, etiquette and just plain not being stupid about the people you deal with. Most card store owners I know would have thrown her out and given her a good tongue lashing to boot. Being a person who believes in courtesy I did not. In reality I hoped to sway her to my side and even made some calls to try to do it better which by the way she really wasn’t listening to. I unfortunately got nothing but answer machines from companies on the web she was asking about.
I tried to explain to her I might be able to get one for her at a better price and as she “had to leave” she said in a flippant tone “I’ll check back.” It was the kind of tone which said, thank you but no thank you…we’ll go back to the web sites.
This is one of the things the Internet has done which is sad. It has helped turn people into very rude shoppers. It makes people think “price is all that matters” and in the long run will do more harm than good.
This is why I really appreciate the regular customers I have both on-line and in house. We treat them with common courtesy and they reciprocate. It is a win-win situation for all of us. We all have our bad moments but we still try to do our best. We can only hope to be better people for those who wish to be treated with respect. |
