Pretty Woman Moment

Opposite for me: I once went shoe-shopping in a shop where nothing had a price on it. Lovely assistant, helped me find the right pair, then when he told me the price, I had to say "I'm sorry, I can't afford them." Was weirdly liberating to just say it, and I still feel a bit sad about those lovely shoes I had to walk away from.

I had something that started in a similar way in JL recently, was looking at an iPad Pro they had out and asked a young assistant a couple of questions. He answered and suggested he showed me the Air instead, my adult daughter looked a bit horrified and asked me why he was showing me a cheaper model. I have had a couple of ‘pretty woman’ moments in the past and I think she expected me to react. I laughed and suggested that I was a 60 plus woman who might not make use of all the tech on the other one. He explained that they are discouraged from upselling, he spent a fair bit of time talking about what I wanted from it and we agreed that the Air would meet all my needs. I was actually quite grateful to him.

In the nineties I was a market trader so had a lot of cash. I was also about 23 years old and my husband looked younger. We needed a bigger vehicle for the bootsales side of the business and decided on a Land rover. We had £30k in cash to buy it which we needed to bank first, they wouldn't even let us test one. We ended up buying an estate car from a dealer instead. We were Goths and reckon they though we were taking the piss

It was so simple then wasn't it?

Why assume people are paranoid or making up experiences? What would be the point on an anonymous forum?

There are quite a few reasons why salespeople might be rude:

• they're (individuals, not a generalisation) not that smart and don't make the connection/have the ability to see past looks

• they aren't on commission and don't give a fuck about whether they sell - I dont know why people assume all sales staff get commission

• they're just having a bad day and take it out on the customer

• they don't realise how they come across- could be language/culture differences, autism, or just a misinterpretation/misunderstanding

• They are specifically told by senior staff to weed out the likely non spenders and occasionally make the "wrong" judgement call

• its the type of shop where who buys the stuff is as/more important than how many sales are made. Many exclusive stores dont want to sell to what they perceive as the "wrong" type of customers regardless of whether they can afford it. They want to maintain the exclusivity of the brand rather than just selling as many items as possible. Look at how burberry's reputation was impacted when they got too mass/down market and how they've deliberately tried to limit stock to bring back the "correct" clientele, or how Hermes sells bags.

• they're new and inexperienced

• they're just dicks who get their kicks from looking down on those whom they consider to be beneath them.

I’m glad that this wasn’t about a man leaving money on your night stand but it would only have been a Pretty Woman moment if you went back in carrying the expensive door you just bought from somebody else and shouted “big mistake” at them lol.

It’s surprising assumptions people make when you don’t fit the mould of their exceptations. We have no interest in labels or brands, cars get you from A to B, we like doing what we enjoy doing and have strong regional accents so get this nonsense all the time.

My favourite was trying to buy a car. We’d been gardening and had arrived in my little runaround. They firstly refused to give us our booked test drive without the paper component of my husbands licence. Had to go home and come back. Then they still refused as apparently “they” should have booked the appointment. Finally they accused us of lying and wasting their time.

After muchas spirited discussion it turned out that “they” were the council and the salesman thought we were social workers as the council bought all their cars from them and thus it wasn’t worth his time to do the test drive.

I didn’t half enjoy watching their little faces as I told them we weren’t social workers but husband was in fact c-suite level at one of the UKs biggest companies. A company who bought all their pool cars as well as many vans through their brand as well as their vehicles being available to staff via the corporate car scheme (hence our presence).

Bade them a cheery farewell and said husbands office would be having a nice chat with their Head Office on Monday morning as to why our money wasn’t good enough for them. I did enjoy the resulting 20+ increasingly frantic voice messages from the garage owner “please call me back….please”.

Just becuase you haven't experienced something first-hand doen't mean it's a figment of other people's imagination.

Was it a trade show? She was politely telling you that they only take big orders of like 30+ doors and you would be a more suitable customer for another company. It wasn’t a dig, she was trying to say it politely and sharing the information.

I don't know if the agent ever tried to get commission but I think the sellers would have got really awkward about a potential buyer being turned away. It seemed as if they were going to go in and make a really strong complaint, but I don't know if they did.
Ah, I don't think I can start giving clues. He's in the music industry. He's... not young 😄He's mostly song writing now, we have a very low key life. Actually, he's the most lovely man, came into my life after a very bleak time.

Similar happened to me in a Gaggenau showroom, not as overt, but as I was asking the salesman about some ovens and steam ovens, the salesman said ‘these items are really targeted for high net worth individuals’ 😀😀😀. Clueless!!

Had this twice at a local branded car dealer. Twice we went in there (3 years apart) to buy new cars. First time for my partner who went elsewhere and a different brand then it was my turn. Ignored, both times, presumed because my partner and I are slightly alternative scruffy buggers. Left a review online, manager apologised.

People will always judge by appearance.

I have an opposite estate agent one. My parents were looking to buy a new house, but just didn't have the time to schlep round the estate agents (it was pre-internet). So I offered to go round for them. I was about 25, I went into town to go swimming, and after swimming, still with slightly damp hair, no make up because I never wear any, and jeans and a T shirt I went round all the estate agents that covered the top 25% price range of houses in the area, and collected lots of brochures and put my parents details on the books of all the relevant agents. And no-one blinked an eyelid. They were just nice to me. Not overly nice, just normal. And my parents did end up buying a house through one of them.

These days GDPR would mean I don't think I could do it anyway!

I had similar when I was getting some new tyres. Chose the most expensive because I think tyre safety is important and I wanted them to last. He said "Hadn't you better ask your dad first?"

Firstly, I'm a 35 year old woman who is perfectly capable of paying for her own tyres, and the expensive car I was driving at the time. This is not a brag, it's just one of the things I like to spend my money on, we don't really do holidays abroad so we like nice cars instead.

Secondly... the man sitting in the car was my flipping partner! (Who had his OWN car and didn't make any decisions involving mine!) AND he was hugely offended by being told he looked old enough to be my dad!

I said that's really rude, I was going to buy 4 top of the range tyres from you today, but now I'm going to the other place (their competitor).

He actually followed me back to the car saying he was sorry, he was only joking (because sexism is super funny don't you know?) and he really needed the commission, and could do me a small discount to make up for his error of judgement.

He didn't get it :).

Similar things have happened to me and DH. Upmarket home shop in Glasgow’s west end, assumed we couldn’t afford anything, couple of high end clothing places… we both grew up poor but we’re not poor now. I think we dress pretty smart, I get a lot of compliments at work about my outfits. Do we just have poor people face? Is it the accents? I guess we will never know.

When it’s just a standard lack of service (shop assistants ignoring us, not being friendly ect.) we just leave it. Their loss. In your situation I would say that crosses the line to rude though and I would be inclined to have a moan over email. We once got 10% off from moaning.

I was dreamily reading this thread, having recently rewatched pretty woman, when I realized I actually have had the Pretty Woman moment myself. About 40 years ago when I was university age. I come from an academic family and basically never had a dress or any particularly nice clothes. Just not the New England style. Then my father won a Nobel and my mother and I went to New York to look for dresses. We must have looked impossible and we did not understand the rules of designer dresses—I only later read Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris. So because we didn’t know you had to have an appointment with the shop we kept getting turned away. However my tutor at University was a very skilled New Yorker snd she had given me a lecture on style wand what we were going for (European Formal not American…etc…etc…).

We were in some top shop and the saleswoman was standing ignoring us at the fitting room and she reluctantly asked if she could help me. I (superbly, ridiculously) repeated my tutor’s lecture “ My father has just won the Nobel in Chemistry and we are looking for…” Her eyes lit up.

Actually she had been waiting for a customer who stood her up and she was terribly nice in the rnd. She sold us some gorgeous dresses and kept referring to me (dressed in jeans snd army boots) as “baby” —and what would baby like? Baby must try this.

I got accosted by a man in waitrose, I had a christmas bonus and had bought and paid for a bunch of nice items that I was carefully putting into the foodbank collection. He scurried up to me shouting that I should not be taking things out for myself and that I was a disgrace.
I said loudly that i was putting things in, named them, told him he could check if he likes and asked what he had put in. Which was nothing.
He huffed off and left his poor wife to apologise for him.
I was wearing socks and sliders and a tatty coat that looked like it had come out of a bin to be fair.. as ai had just been for a run in the mud and chucked on what was in the car to go into waitrose.

The business world is in the toilet are there really all these sales people being shitty? I think some people are a bit paranoid

No sales person is going to risk their job by being snotty to customers

We had similar with a bathroom company. We had them out to measure up, made an appointment to see the plans, and they hadn't bothered doing them, as they felt it would be an expensive job!
We spent 11 grand with someone else

I’m glad if he lost his commission but wouldn’t he have got commission anyway because you saw the house advertised in his estate agent window?

p.s. give us a clue who your DH is

Please elaborate

We had it buying an expensive car in our 20s. A relative was buying it for us and wanted us to have a particular make. We both looked young for our age I guess and had a toddler in tow. Anyway, we went elsewhere and probably bought about 5 expensive cars over the next decade from the dealership that didn't talk to us like we were something they trod in

https://theface.com/culture/pretty-woman-j-f-lawton-history-shopping-rodeo-drive-scene

I’ve had a fair few moments like this.

One time I went to a fairly high end accessories store to pick up a bespoke handbag for my mother. I was a very young mother so I know how it looked for many people. The woman was incredibly rude, refused to look it up and chucked the invoice book at me across the counter to “look it up if you want to”.
I left, called my mother explaining what happened and when I went back she was way, way nicer. Very sad, really.

I’ll never understand why this happens in retail. We all know you’re not exactly making a killing nor do you (probably) own the store, where’s this high and mighty attitude coming from?