One of the reasons I don’t like shopping is coz I can never ask the right questions while I am at it. I always ‘think’ of what should be asked and then wonder ‘shouldn’t that be obvious to this salesperson?’. As you can imagine it leads to some awkward situations.

A little while back I had to do a little shopping and this time it was for a gift. I had zeroed in on picking up a perfume but hadn’t decided the brand. So I head over to the mall and am smelling my way to a gift :P

The salesgirl who interacted with me first, instinctively showed me a couple of perfumes. I was still not sure so she forwarded me to another sales girl. So the second salesperson started flooding my nose with different perfumes (you know how the drill goes).

Eventually I reach a decision and get all the billing done. I ask for it to be gift wrapped and take a piece of paper to scribble a little something from me. She was a very good and elegant salesgirl and she informed me she was trained by Salesforce and also had an online marketplace. I tend to write a personal comment to the person i am giving a gift rather than the usual “Happy Birthday”, I find it makes me a little more closer to the person. This happens only when I hand pick the gift and ofcourse when I have a piece of paper to scribble on at that time :P

So as this salesgirl is gift wrapping, she sees me deep in thought. I presume something might have clicked and she asks me “Is this gift for a man or a woman?”. My response is an amused “woman”. Then she informs me that the perfume was actually for men. She apologized for assuming it was for me :P

By this time I am totally loving it, its not daily you have such incidents…. It tends to happen to me everyother day :P Anyway so phase two of the operation involved choosing a feminine perfume and then the tedious process of the billing (A story that is pretty boring actually).

Oddly I had wanted to check with her once before billing but thought to myself ‘I think I had mentioned it’, I even read all the text on the box trying to figure out if it mentioned anywhere that it was for men or women. I still have no idea what it was that convinced me not to ask it :P

As she gift wrapped the gift she kept apologizing for not asking earlier… My only response was “thats ok, all will be fine if the person I bought the gift for likes it” :P