(This post might ramble, sorry.)
I work in a shop. We sell kitchen equipment to both trade and everyday punters.
One of our biggest sellers is knives. Proper, serious chef-fing knives.
We have a great display behind the 'jump' (tills), out of reach of customers for obvious reasons, but they sit there on a semi-magnetic wall, glistening with their elegant deadliness.
I work in a less than salubrious area of Brighton. It is slightly away from the main drags, but is still busy, especially on a Saturday, with walk-ins, and as we only recently opened, we are getting a lot of people in, who didn't know we existed until recently.
Anyway, yesterday. A potential customer walks in, and I am standing at the door, doing the greeting thing (which is fine, as I have a nice smile, and can make others smile with a well turned phrase), and asks me 'What is the sharpest knife that you sell?'
ALARM BELLS. I mean what the actual fuck. I could describe this gentleman simply by saying that he looked like the guy from 'Hellraiser', without the needles.
So, taking him at (ahem) face-value, I showed him to our display, and he practically melted over the floor. My colleague almost puked when she saw him, and realised what he was after. She was brilliant by following to the letter, the procedure for showing knives to customers, and all was well.
However, what made it all a bit of a freakout, was that the person would not actually touch the knives, and said money is no object, but they are not for him.
So I made sure that the ones shown to him, were the most expensive options... he went away, saying he would be back later.
He came back 20 minutes later, and the exact same thing happened. By this time, we were already strategically putting objects around the store, in case anything kicked off. (We sell some steels (sharpeners for knives) that are the size and weight of a quite large, thin cudgel).
By THIS time, we had freeze-framed the security video, got his picture, and passed it around the area.
He went away again, claiming he would come back a third time. Fortunately, he didn't.
Were we overreacting? Maybe. I found later that I was not the only one of the 3 of us, who were working on plans of defence. One colleague was working out the advantages of weight distribution of our stock, when he threw them (ex-chef, he knows how to throw things), and the other had already fetched her house keys, to fit into her fist, should the need arise.
Were we overreacting? You are fucking right we were. It seems totally incongruous now, but at the time, it was slightly scary, and a little exciting.
Of course, it could have just been a new team-building exercise by our unseen overlords. Or possibly some new methodology along the mystery shopper guidelines... anyway, we learned a couple of things: our supervisor was nowhere to be seen, on either occasion, and the store manager was on a day off. While the latter seems unconnected, it was just as well, because we minions realised, that there would have been panic, if all the staff were there, and the manager was 'in charge'.
Reading this back, it sounds a teeny bit hysterical, but its a basic job (great money, good company), so any excitement that comes along, has some merit.
I work in a shop. We sell kitchen equipment to both trade and everyday punters.
One of our biggest sellers is knives. Proper, serious chef-fing knives.
We have a great display behind the 'jump' (tills), out of reach of customers for obvious reasons, but they sit there on a semi-magnetic wall, glistening with their elegant deadliness.
I work in a less than salubrious area of Brighton. It is slightly away from the main drags, but is still busy, especially on a Saturday, with walk-ins, and as we only recently opened, we are getting a lot of people in, who didn't know we existed until recently.
Anyway, yesterday. A potential customer walks in, and I am standing at the door, doing the greeting thing (which is fine, as I have a nice smile, and can make others smile with a well turned phrase), and asks me 'What is the sharpest knife that you sell?'
ALARM BELLS. I mean what the actual fuck. I could describe this gentleman simply by saying that he looked like the guy from 'Hellraiser', without the needles.
So, taking him at (ahem) face-value, I showed him to our display, and he practically melted over the floor. My colleague almost puked when she saw him, and realised what he was after. She was brilliant by following to the letter, the procedure for showing knives to customers, and all was well.
However, what made it all a bit of a freakout, was that the person would not actually touch the knives, and said money is no object, but they are not for him.
So I made sure that the ones shown to him, were the most expensive options... he went away, saying he would be back later.
He came back 20 minutes later, and the exact same thing happened. By this time, we were already strategically putting objects around the store, in case anything kicked off. (We sell some steels (sharpeners for knives) that are the size and weight of a quite large, thin cudgel).
By THIS time, we had freeze-framed the security video, got his picture, and passed it around the area.
He went away again, claiming he would come back a third time. Fortunately, he didn't.
Were we overreacting? Maybe. I found later that I was not the only one of the 3 of us, who were working on plans of defence. One colleague was working out the advantages of weight distribution of our stock, when he threw them (ex-chef, he knows how to throw things), and the other had already fetched her house keys, to fit into her fist, should the need arise.
Were we overreacting? You are fucking right we were. It seems totally incongruous now, but at the time, it was slightly scary, and a little exciting.
Of course, it could have just been a new team-building exercise by our unseen overlords. Or possibly some new methodology along the mystery shopper guidelines... anyway, we learned a couple of things: our supervisor was nowhere to be seen, on either occasion, and the store manager was on a day off. While the latter seems unconnected, it was just as well, because we minions realised, that there would have been panic, if all the staff were there, and the manager was 'in charge'.
Reading this back, it sounds a teeny bit hysterical, but its a basic job (great money, good company), so any excitement that comes along, has some merit.
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