I admit it, I play favorites. Yes, dear reader, I have favorite customers. Customers who are so fun, so easy to work with and so happy to be SPOOL customers that they make it a joy to come to work. Some of these customers are in store and some are online and before you ask, no, it actually has little to do with the amount of money they are able to leave in my shop at the end of their SPOOL experience and has way more to do with how they approach their visit to our store.
The truth is that many shop owners keep their lips tightly shut on these matters for fear of losing a sale but let’s face, it I have rarely been one to take the safe path, so let’s explore this subject a bit deeper!
As I said, I play favorites – I have been known to drop in extra patterns, bonus yardage, collectors pin,s or BadAss goodness into orders and in-store purchases just because it was so damned fun to work with certain customers. I am lucky; SPOOL has a fair number of these BadAss Quilters but the honest truth is I can’t say this about every soul that walks through our door.
Again, this is not about the dollars spent (but please do, spend, it is what keeps a store open) but about the attitude when in shop. It is about being present, courteous, aware, and ready to think about what you are doing. Of course there is always the time that you need to just wander around and touch fabric to make your day better, and that is cool as well. Some days are for dreaming and planning; we get that and honor your need to have time in your own head.
Sticky Wickets
What is not so cool are customers who abuse the store with both their actions and their words leaving us dazed and confused as to what has just happened as they walk out the door leaving in their wake a laundry list of sins that leave us gape-mouthed if not outright furious and even occasionally make us cry.
Do I think that people do all of these things on purpose? No. But I do think that as a culture we have become numb at times to the wake of our personal space and expectations on a variety of situations, and this extends to the way people shop.
In the south we have a phrase that we use when a woman is really difficult; we say she is a “hard woman to love.” The same goes for some customers. Of course some sins are more egregious than others but let’s just trip through a mercifully shortened list of situations I have encountered since opening the shop 3 years ago and learn about situations that will get a shopper bumped from the favorite customer list in a heartbeat.
Hard Customers to Love (cheater’s list of things not to do in a quilt shop)
Walking into the store on a cell phone, not making eye contact, and acting as if our greeting you is an imposition on your time. Extra eye rolls awarded for having your conversation via speaker function the whole time you are in the shop. Bonus points for referring to your sister-in-law as a “skank” during the conversation. That was certainly special!
Showing up to class unprepared, late, or without the basic knowledge of your machine (it was not a new machine class).. Extra points awarded when talking loudly to a table-mate about all the great deals you get buying fabric online over buying fabric in the very shop you are taking a class.
Taking photos without first asking. Yes, in my store you can take photos, but asking is nice. What is not nice is taking photos of the end of bolts so that you can then comparison shop those fabrics online at a later date and then have the brass balls to tell me you are doing it! For the win, whip out your cell phone and order the book online that you are looking at in my store and tell me what a great deal you just got on Amazon!
Snooping where you are not allowed. Walking back into obviously office / storage space, opening storage units or rifling through bathroom cabinets. Extra points for stealing our Poo-pourri bathroom spray. I mean really, I don’t remember there being a big bathroom spray famine, buy your own damned spray!
Pick up an item, raise it high into the air Lion-King-style and announce to the whole shop that this is the daily deal on Missouri Star! Extra points when then also point out 5 other things in the shop that you are going to go home and buy online as soon as you get us to help you figure up how much binding you need for your new pot holder (made with the Deal of the Day charm pack you got last week from Missouri Star as well!)
Engage a sales associate totally for an hour or more, get out 30 bolts, take up the whole sales counter, and then request an 1/8 of a yard from each of them. Extra points if while we unfold them to cut you decide that you really don’t like many of them and tell us “never mind” and walk out telling us you need to “think about it.”
Grab the corner of the fabric that I had laid out to cut in order to “help me” get it straight. Bonus points when you keep tugging it in order for me to cut “just a bit extra for free.”
Need to use the bathroom? Please do, but please also use the fan and clean up after what ever post-apocalyptic event happened for you in there. Extra points for leaving unwrapped sanitary items, dirty diapers, and evidence that even at your age you are still menstruating since I love nothing more than cleaning up blood that is left dripping down the front of the toilet bowl. And, for pity’s sake, FLUSH!
Come in and please feel free to bitch about our location, our hours of business, and how hard we are to find since when I started in business I thought, “What would really piss people off? I know, let’s put our business on a main road, put directions and a map on the front of our website in a large town, and let’s also be open 7 days a week. That should do it! Extra points when you refer to my shop as being in the “hood” and openly questioning why there are “so many black people around here.”
Bring in a cup of coffee, sports drink or beer (wtf?) and then abandon it on my shelves. Extra points for hiding it behind a display so it later gets knocked over and ruins something.
Go ahead and open a kit or tied bundle “to see something better” and then leave it in a heap. I can’t tell you how much I love that! Extra points for hiding it behind some bolts of fabric!
Come in my store and tell me I “have a lot of nerve charging $xx.xx for that!” Go on to explain that you can get something “almost like that” at Walmart for “SO MUCH LESS”… …please do.
Want to look at a pattern? You bet! Bring it to the front and let us help you with that. Bonus points for ripping open the seal, and then sneaking off into a corner of the store to try to take photos of the instructions and then getting huffy with me when I tell you that you are violating copyright as I pull the pattern out of your hand and tell you I will be charging you for the pattern and it will be waiting for you at the front counter when you are done shopping.
Come in, ask for a line of fabric of which we have bought the whole collection. Have us get out ALL THE BOLTS for you, open each, tell us about the quilt you plan to make, and ask approximately 1 ZILLION questions about project construction and technique, then thank us for showing you the fabric and make for the door telling us that you are SO VERY GLAD we have the collection since you really wanted to see in person it before you ordered it online.
And people wonder why some quilt store owners drink.
