You know that motto: "you don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps"? well, welcome to my world. being a little crazy to start with definitely helps. this way, you don't have far to fall when you truly do go crazy.
personally, i see myself as a sort of margaret mead of retail. i pretend that i'm a social anthropologist studying some strange and exotic culture or sub-culture by infiltrating the system and blending in as much as possible.
that is not to say that it's my only viewpoint while i work. on the contrary! my primary motivation is usually boredom or sometimes sheer wicked sense of humor. in short, i entertain myself much like a cat entertains itself by torturing mice.
for instance, one night i entertained myself for an entire shift by trying to convince people that kerfluffle was a potentially dangerous ingredient in food products. once i had the customer convinced that kerfluffle was a bad thing, i proceeded to reassure them that our products were 100% kerfluffle free and always had been. i gave myself a points system and i won the game if i could get some customers, or at least one, to go to the customer service desk and ask concerned questions about kerfluffle.
i even announced on the PA system that our products were always kerfluffle free.
to my consternation (and semi-delight), i found the word suddenly appearing more frequently in more news articles and literature. now that game can't be repeated. damn! the few people who actually knew what kerfuffle meant laughed and i joined in.
i find that observing large numbers of people clues me in to general human behavior. generally, it's pretty disgusting. if you are ever unsure that man is descended from the apes, try giving out free food to people who may not even be hungry. you'll definitely change your tune. keep in mind that for the most part, the people in my store are highly affluent, well-educated people. some are quite intelligent but they run the gamut from an IQ roughly equivalent to a gym sock to possible nobel peace prize for physics. and, to be fair, there are some who are truly delightful, polite, sweet people whom i look forward to talking to. they are, sad to say, in the minority.
people break down into categories which i have made up, again for my own entertainment. this is not very scientific, but sheer numbers carry their own weight and i find other people in retail, both in my particular store & in other stores in general, agree with my assessment.
there are people who eat first, ask questions later, then complain that they're allergic or not allowed to eat what they just consumed. what do you call that?!
there are people who find it necessary to tell you the whole sad story about why they can't eat what i have on offer, but want to know why i'm not demonstrating something they can have. a simple "no thank you" works very well for me. your personal information about food preferences, allergies, religious convictions regarding food, philosophical ideas about food and its origins are irrelevant to me. the question to ask yourself if you are one of these is: does this afffect in any way what the demo kitchen is offering that day? the answer is : generally, no. i find this works best on a need to care basis. perhaps if i worked on commission based on sales resulting from tasting a product this would be relevant information. i don't and it isn't. sorry. "no thank you"- the perfect phrase. then keep moving.
there are people who act as if they have never seen food before. you can tell that this isn't true because they are never cadaverously thin due to a longterm fast or recent wasting illness, they are simply greedy.
other customers labor under the misconception that i am operating a cafe and try to order what they want as if they are at a restaurant. this is forgiveable if they have never been to my store before, but usually they are regulars whom i see every day or close to it.
some customers will not even say hello, ignore me standing there and proceed to take as many samples as are in front of them. i have a sneeze guard in front of me with a counter that runs along the front side of it for samples. when i first started,i foolishly put out between 5 and 20 samples. people in this category will unashamedly put out their paw and take all of the samples or nearly all. or they will return repeatedly until they achieve the same result.the repeat offender, as i call them, thinks that because they didn't take everything all at once, i don't recognize them. this move is similar to the classic donut commercial where the round man with the little hitler mustache uses obvious attempts to disguise himself to get more donuts. it's just as pathetic & desperate, only it's real life and they really think they're being clever. scary. if they can't get at more than 1 or 2 samples (i've gotten smarter), they will not hesitate to put their paws behind the sneeze guard and proceed to take my back-up units ready to replace the samples. when there is a spoon or other utensil inserted in a help-yourself sample tray(we've learned by now just how crazy we were to put a help-yourself tray out at all), they seem to be under the impression that they are there for decorative purposes only and use their fingers and touch all the samples, touch some and then put it back, or worse things you don't even want to imagine- unfortunately, i don't have to. i have seen the same behaviors from bears and raccoons when i camped out in the wilderness and forgot to put food high up in trees. the bears tend to be more polite. raccoons could go either way, depending on the raccoon.
the above types of customers have led me to the name i secretly give to my job: Rich People's Soup Kitchen, or my other favorite: Feeding time at Sea World. Well, at least otters do tricks for it. Is it any wonder i have to find ways to entertain myself?
Here's another secret i have discovered in retail: no matter how big the sign, no matter how directly you place it next to something, people rarely draw any conclusions and correlate the sign with the object. this i liken to the old adage about training dogs: if you don't punish the dog for undesirable behavior immediately, they don't associate it with the undesirable action and they can't figure out what they've done wrong. people are much harder to train. there are people who are in my store literally every day, and no matter how many times they visit my demo station, it never occurs to them that whatever we are demonstrating is ALWAYS displayed in front of my station and that there is a huge sign indicating the items and their prices. ever see the movie "40 first dates"? or how about dorie in "finding nemo"? this many people can't ALL have short-term memory loss! what are the odds that they all shop in one place?
sometimes i have experimented with visual space. after watching many people and where their eyes tend to go, as well as what seems to be ignored, which is quite a lot ( i call this blind space), i have placed things on my demo table such that people go back and forth from one end of my table to another. reminds me of caged animals at the zoo. very amusing.
the blind space is fascinating to me. a colleague at work with a divinely devilish sense of humor took glass bottles displayed at eye level in the middle of the counter and upended the top layer of bottles.the bottles were slim at the top tapering to a larger base, so they were rather delicately but expertly balanced.i found this funny to begin with, but when i watched people who came to the demo station, i noticed that not one of them noticed anything unusual. their eyes didn't even flicker over them. maybe it's just me. i dunno.
i must sound fairly cynical, but it is hard for people who do my job to remain hopeful about the future of mankind after witnessing the behaviors i have mentioned above. people have even deposited their children in front of my stand and gone on shopping. please do not confuse me with your babysitter!
...and speaking of babysitting, there are the poor lonely souls who stand at my station for hours (or maybe it just seems like hours), who seem to have confused me with either a psychotherapist or a non-alcoholic bartender without the fun of liquor, good wages and generous tips. don't get me wrong: there are many people who are delightful to talk to and i consider them good company, looking forward to their visits. then there are people who just won't leave and aren't particularly interesting. these people will ignore normal social signals when a number of people have started to gather at my station and i really need to be able to hand out samples so that people will move on without creating a bottleneck in the aisles. pubs in england handle this situation brilliantly by proclaiming shortly before the pub closes for the afternoon "time, gentleman! we've all got homes to go to!" and everyone immediately understands and goes home. aahhh, if only...dare to dream.
getting back to the subject of children, it is unwise to let your children loose upon the demo station for many reasons. young children should never be left unsupervised in a retail establishment to begin with, because they can do dangerous things and we cannot legally be held responsible if an injury occurs as a result, which i have seen happen. they may also have some food allergy and be too young to remember to ask if the sample contains an allergen. believe it or not, demo divas don't generally receive EMT or heimlich maneuver training. we understand that it's never easy to shop with a young child, so we try to give you samples with which to appease them (rather like appeasing an angry volcano god) so that they can be coralled successfully by you for their safety.
we do all we can to keep your child reasonably happy while you shop, but in the end it is up to you, and this may come as a shock to some of you, to keep them behaving reasonably well while in a public space. not an easy task at best, but consider this as an acid test of your parenting skills. the mere act of reproduction by itself does not in any way guarantee that you possess the skills, intelligence or common sense necessary to be a good parent.
if you are not up to the task, admit defeat quickly and call in an expert or three: babysitters, nannies, grandma- anyone you can either pay or can be enlisted from friends or family. this list of potential combatants should never include retail salespeople. not part of the job description, i can guarantee you. we either have our own to contend with, or kids like your little beasts have served admirably as birth control devices for us. i now know why some animals eat their young.
another reason for not leaving your children unsupervised at the demo station is that young children (and sometimes older ones!) don't always know, care or understand what allergies, religious traditions or other dietary restraints you have placed on them and we don't have any way of knowing these without you telling us. this applies to adults as well, but you are able to tell us before we give you something that will make you sick or break your diet. ask questions! the last thing we want to do is to give you a negative experience while at our store. most demo station workers will ask children if their parent or accompanying adult has given them permission to try samples before giving them anything. please explain to your child that this is just a sample and not lunch or dinner. then explain it tu yourself! it's a great way to find out if a picky eater will like what you're considering buying to make at home and if the product is prepared, we will even open something for you or them to try before you buy it, but this is up to our discretion and not required by our employers. they have been kind enough to give us special permission to do this, though.
that brings me to another point. there are some customers who think it must be very amusing to tell us that "now i won't have to eat lunch/dinner". yes, what a wonderfully amusing joke. no matter how many thousands of times i hear that during the course of each and every day, i never fail to be amused by your little joke. have you ever thought about how it reflects on you? mostly, we think "what a loser! i guess you can't afford to eat on your own dime. what a shame!" probably not the effect you were going for, i suspect. or maybe you think that i think how clever you must be to discover this new way to eat without paying for it. no, not really. you're just cheap. again, doesn't reflect well on you, especially if you're sporting a prada bag worth more than 4 of my paychecks, or a fur coat worth more than 6 months of my salary. yeah, great joke. while most of my colleagues have to live piled in like sardines in some cheap apartment because the wage we're paid isn't enough to possibly afford a place by yourself.
no one puts a gun to our heads to work here, but it pays better than other jobs we could get. Many of us are artists, musicians, students, retirees or it's a second job because the first one doesn't pay enough to keep body and soul together.
Demo is a great way to try new foods, new combinations of foods, get some cooking tips, or test drive a new food for a picky eater in the family. And sometimes, we can brighten each other's day. But that's really all you should expect.
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