gordonzola | Reading and retail

I am good at the type of retail I do, generally. There’s a very quick window in which to read someone before deciding how to talk to them and what cheese to recommend. There are any number of clues, of course, even disregarding the obvious cheese customer profiles which are really about class (and race) anyway.

I didn’t actually read the first guy wrong so much as it was early and I stumbled over my own words. He was part of a gay couple and they were shopping for brunch. We had only been open for an hour and he was the fourth man I’d seen wearing a "England" sweatshirt. So I said, "hey, why is everyone wearing England sweatshirts today? Is it a World Cup thing?"

The look on his face told me what I needed to know. Not only did he not follow the World Cup but I had just told him his sweatshirt was unoriginal, non-fabulous, and trendy among heterosexuals. I overcompensated by giving him and his boyfriend extra cheese samples.

My next mis-read happened almost imediately. A het couple came in and the man was doing the talking. They were looking for a picnic brie so I recommended the Fromager D’affinois, a factory-made cheese but a good one. It’s mild and super oozy. It was the wrong guess.

As the Specialty Cheese Shop Manual tells us, "The major customers of specialty cheese shops are the higher educated, more affluent and better traveled members of the community – in short, the leaders." (SCSM 1981) Now, I don’t care about that kind of profile, but sometimes the customers do. There’s a status some attach to their cheese purposes, not surprising in a country where consumer identity is so strong that about all the left can do is be a social force for making people feel guilty about their purchases (but that’s another entry).

It was like I slapped him. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was insulted by being offered a factory made cheese instead of a handmade one. "No, I think we’ll go with the Brie de Meaux," he said, letting me know I knew less than he did and cutting off the conversation. . Of course, in this country it’s actual name is Fromage de Meaux because it’s not made with raw milk, but ignore that.

The above description sounds nastier than it actually was. He was fairly subtle really, but I’ve worked with the public long enough to recognize it. Back when I was younger and punker customers would just outwardly show disdain, now I have to read the clues. It was just that one wrong guess can ruin your credibility to some folks. Sure, no great loss on a personal level. But I had lots of fancy cheese to sell the guy if I had guessed right.

Some retail days are like that. For the rest of the day I just gave out samples and let the cheese do most of the talking.

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From:

sarahshevett.livejournal.com

There’s a status some attach to their cheese purposes, not surprising in a country where consumer identity is so strong that about all the left can do is be a social force for making people feel guilty about their purchases (but that’s another entry).

See,
that's what I am talking about. You so rock.
I bow down in your presence.

I can't even comment.

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Reading and retail

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