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| Be Careful When You Share Your Stories! |
Maybe you could use a laugh or two. Maybe you have a special one you could share with the readers. You are welcome to add a comment or two, just keep it clean. Some of the best ones involve relationships that are not always healthy. Keep the names and places confidential. If you choose to share one, be respectful...please.
I decided to share a few of the classics I have witnessed in my business walk. The best ones are about relationships and near misses. Some of these mentally recorded experiences included employees, some were offered by customers and others came from complete strangers. The thing that makes them so strange is the reality of their existence. They did occur. Believe it or not, they did occur.
Many years ago I was selling furniture in my store to a middle aged couple. I knew the husband a little tiny bit but did not know his wife. They were shopping for a new mattress. I led them upstairs to the mattress department. They were not acting particularly strange nor were they acting in a comical mood. In fact, they were a bit stressed out and seemed to be chipping back and forth at each other with the nature of cutting comments. I almost left them alone to allow them to shop on their own. It was clear they were not having a good time. Sometimes you get customers that do not want to be out and about shopping together. These two did not want to be out doing what they were doing. They made it clear.
So my answer to her question took a bit of thought, at first. Being the salesman I am, I suggested a couple of sets for her to check out. She walked over to the first one I suggested. She climbed up onto the mattress and proceeded to get into the middle of it and tested it while on her hands and knees. She was on the top of the mattress as if she was going to crawl, on her hands and knees. I noticed how she was slightly bouncing up and down, trying to feel the springs on her hands and knees. I suggested that she should lie down on the mattress so she could feel the bed the way she sleeps on it in order to see if the springs were noticeable. As her husband stoically watched, she began to bounce up and down more vigorously and responded with this comment, "This is the position that hurts my knees the most and I am trying to see if I can feel the springs this way. I am tired of the springs hurting my knees!" Those explicit comments were not particularly odd to them. I was stunned and asked if they wanted to examine the mattress on their own. They did not. They eventually bought a mattress set after she tried several of them out...some more than once...the same way. The check cleared.
Another time a couple requested to try out a mattress set I had arranged in a bedroom set displayed in the street side display window. The passing drivers could see the display. They asked if they could get into the bed display and really try it out. They wanted to know if I would object to it if they spent the night trying out the mattress set and see if it was the one they liked. I thought they were joking. They were serious. They suggested and offered to do a radio testimony advertisement on the mattress "trial effort" and said it would be a creative and good advertising campaign for my store. They promised to wear appropriate pajamas and would not "stain" the mattress! They were a fairly prominent couple in the community and did have a reputation for being different. They wanted to know if I would also discount the bed since they believed the overnight trial would create quite a bit of attention for the store. I tried to shuck it off several times but they kept on trying to make it happen, persistently. I finally gave them a small discount without the experience and they bought the bed. Two days later, they called and tried one more time to make that advertising event happen, anyway. I refused. Once in awhile when I would bump into them later at community events, they would bring it up and describe what an ogre I was about refusing that "marketing" proposal. True story.
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| Why Not! Kick Back And Rest! |
Years ago we owned a vacant lot next to our business. We had planned to do something with it down the road. During a rough time of undesirable transient activity near that lot, I became persistent and vocal with the local authorities about cleaning up the illegal and unwanted night time activities on and near that vacant lot downtown. During that effort, I was home eating dinner with my family when the phone rang. It was the local police. They wanted me to come down to that lot and help them prevent a person from committing a gun shooting act. When I arrived, the neighboring business owner who had a shoe repair business, was straddled on top of a transient who was lying prone on his face. The police where surrounding the couple with guns drawn. They were all on my vacant lot. It was dark but I could see my neighbor had a pistol cocked and ready to fire that was placed at the back of the transients head. The transient was shaking and scared. Officers were trying to convince the business owner to withdraw the gun and put it down. He refused to do so until they brought me down to tell him it was OK to drop the gun. I stood there in shock. It was a surreal scene, but real. The shoe store owner yelled at me to give him permission to shoot the transient. I was numb. The shoe store owner yelled that he would do it for a six pack of beer! That is all he wanted to finish the job! All I needed to do was give him the green light since it was my property. I told him to put the gun down and for goodness sake, do not shoot anybody. They released the transient and placed the shoe store owner into a jail cell for a little while. When I went home, my wife and I could not sleep. All night we would whisper to each other, "Wow."
The next one is kind of below the belt. Sorry for that, but it was so bizarre.
Every once in awhile you read a fantasy story in a Playboy magazine about a chance advance between two individuals. I do not read these magazines but have in the past back in my college days, almost 30 years ago. This is one of those stories. However, the event was not the strange part of this story...the follow-up experience was the goofy part of this event.
I was asked to go measure some floors at the house of a potential customer up in the rural part of our country. We used to call that area of farm region, "up country." I was going to a farm house to measure floors for a customer to prepare a bid on a potential floor replacement project. The customer had been in my store and took some floor samples home. She wanted a bid estimate. When I arrived that morning she answered the door in a bath robe and slippers. I was surprised and sheepishly asked if I was too early. She invited me in. I proceeded to measure the living room, the hallway and the bathroom down the hall. As I entered the bathroom, she was standing there naked, starring at me. I apologized and excused myself. I was shocked. I avoided anything that would be inappropriate but this is not the goofy part. I did complete the bid estimate at my store and called her to give her the bid amount. She was not interested. Truthfully, I was relieved. Here is the goofy part.
I did not know it, but her son-in-law was the guy who always pumped my gas at a local service station. The next time I went in to fill up with fuel he mentioned the event in almost perfect detail. He was married to her daughter and the mother-in-law had a husband, who still lived with her at that home! Up until that point, I had told nobody about that event. The son-in-law said she did not have me do the floor replacement job because I was not very cooperative! He told me what she said to him, "If I could refuse her, she could refuse me." I decided at that point to tell my wife about the strange experience. Seriously! What is wrong with some people? I do not ever remember placing a "red light" at the front of my furniture store door!
One more bizarre story. I had a couple of regular furniture buying customers who spent money routinely at my store, year after year. One day one of the wives came in to reveal to me that she and her husband were divorcing and the two couples were actually switching partners. She was going to move in with the other husband while his wife was going to move in with her husband. She and her new mate were going to move out of town, about a two-hour drive away. She wanted to know if I continued to sell her furniture would I be willing to deliver it that far away? I agreed to make it happen, since she usually bought in high volume. She walked around and discussed all kinds of things and selected a family room arrangement we had just recently received in stock. Her selection included the whole arrangement. The whole vignette was a coordinated arrangement which included a three-piece sectional, four oak occasional tables, some matching lamps, specific matching pillows, coordinated chairs, and the center throw rug that completed the grouping. We wrapped up the deal and scheduled its delivery. When the arrangement left the store, I decided to give that "look" another chance. We had it on the floor only a couple of days and it got a lot of great comments. I ordered it back.
You guessed it.
On a late Saturday afternoon, her ex-husband and his new wife came into the store looking to find a family room setting for a Saturday night party they were hosting at their home later that night. He was always a good customer and enjoyed working with the women I had on staff as salespeople. I turned him and his new wife over to one of those ladies. Shortly after they combed the floor looking around my sales lady came back to me and requested, with urgency and shock, that I go work with them. When I wandered to where they were located in the store he immediately asked me how much for the whole set, as it shows on our floor, and if I can deliver it right now for their party tonight. I paused a long time, went to figure out a price for all of the pieces and listened to my sales lady describe how wrong this was going to turn out. We argued a bit at the counter, away from the customers. Yes, it was exactly the same set and arrangement his ex-wife had delivered to her new home two hours away. I sold it and delivered it to them, same price as his ex-wife had received...just in case.
My sales lady rubbed against that whole deal for about two weeks with me. Then one day I got the "call." The new wife in the local area called and said, "Now we know why you and your sales lady were having a tiff that day." She said they noticed us arguing about something but could not figure it out, when they were in the store buying the set. I told her she had credit to choose whatever she wanted to select in the store and I would gladly replace every piece. I started to describe all the things that ran through our minds to justify why I decided to sell the whole set to them without disclosing the history. She stopped me in my tracks and described how they found out. They were getting ready to host his teenage daughter for the first time this weekend since they re-married. When the daughter entered the house she said, "Oh, my God!" She kept on starring at the living room set. The new wife said her new husband was quick to move on his feet and immediately figured out the whole deal. She said he put two and two together so quickly that his response was this, "We just wanted you to feel at home when you came here, honey!" And the new wife said she was totally puzzled until later he described what happened. He told her to call me and let me know that they love the set and will keep it. To tell me thanks for saving his day!
Every owner claims they could write a book about the strange experiences they have encountered...these are just a few of mine.
What a world of experiences we weave through, eh?
Until next time...
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