PLEASE, DON’T SPRAY ME!

First, a confession, in the interest of full disclosure: I hate shopping. I race through grocery stores at record speeds and hope that what I buy lasts at least a week to avoid extra trips. But grocery shopping is a have-to, at least for now, so I suck it up and endure.

Going clothes shopping, however, should be a pleasant experience. It should be a treasure hunt of sorts: you never know what will catch your eye around the corner, you get to play dress-up and all that jazz. For me, it still amounts to torture on some basic level: more like being stuck in a giant closet than a treasure hunt, but that, too, must be endured. Some department stores are more comfy than others, and that is reflected in the price tag of everything you buy.

In a mad search for 2 very minor items for the Vegas trip, I braved the gorgeous 72- degree day outside and drove to one of these ‘high-end' department stores.  You know the type: you walk in and over-made up sales people offer assistance at every turn.  Well, as luck would have it I had to go through the cosmetics floor to get to where I was going, and lo and behold as I am snaking my way in between the counters a well dressed young man sprays some perfume in front of my nose.  I stopped dead in my tracks, deer in the headlights style, too peeved to even yell at the guy, but I was not so taken aback as to ignore the name on the bottle. Now, there is a chance that I would have found the aroma appealing if it was introduced to me in a less offensive way, such as a ‘unfold and sniff' page of a magazine, or sprayed on a card and only given to me with my permission. But leaving me no choice but to soak it in will always leave the name of the perfume on my do-not-buy-under-any-circumstances list.

Sometimes "any exposure or publicity is good for business" adage is flat our wrong.  So, a bit of advice: tone down any tactic that might make your consumer uncomfortable, and remember that most people DO value their personal space, whether physical or emotional.