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Re: [at-l] ultralight morons

At 10:20 AM 7/27/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Stepping in to defend the retailer for a moment, havving worked at one
>myself.
>
>Remember that the guy doesn't know you or how much experience you have.
>When I worked outdoor retail, we would occasionaly get someone with know
>rock climbing experience who wanted to buy gear and obviously was going to
>hurt themselves ("Oh, I don't need to take a class, I can figure out how
>to do it, should I get one of these thingies?").  Often we would get
>people who were about to buy cheap stuff for a serious endeavor (like a
>$50 backyard tent for a week of canoe camping in a fairly remote place),
>and we did feel a responsibility to try and dissuade them because if we
>didn't they might get hurt, and we knew more about the gear than %95 of
>our customers (that was our job), so in general we could be certain that
>we knew more about what they needed than they did, obnoxious as that
>sounds.
>
>Since that was the case, we also would feel some obligation to tell them
>when they were getting the wrong item for their needs (good thing we
>didn't work on commision).  We also didn't want to see people upset b/c
>they find out the night before, or half way through their trip that what
>they got wasn't working.
>
>For 95% percent of the people (and probably at least that much for LL
>Bean) we were right.  Personally, if it looked like someone knew a lot and
>had experience I would not argue with them, and certainly would not be as
>rude as the guy was to george, but we should remember that these people
>are only trying to help, and for most people they are.
>
>(back to lurking)
>jeff
>
I agree with you completely Jeff, the difference be tween what you are
saying and what I experienced is that the sales person did nothing to try
and find out how much experience I had. Now given, you don't see a lot of
heavily pierced, tattooed, branded, and cut individuals out on the trail
and maybe this guy assumed from my appearence that I knew nothing about
what I was doing, but if that was the case then it makes me even angrier.
If he had asked me how much backpacking I had done, and then suggested
something different I would have appreciated, instead he assumed, a very
dangerous thing for someone in retail to do.
george

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