Once I went into a shop to look for snow pants for my daughter. As I came in there was no one in the store. In a little while a man comes out and when I ask him whether he has any snow pants for a 9-year-old girl he points absentmindedly in to a corner and says; “if we have them, they are over there”. He then took up a newspaper and started reading! I didn’t find any snow pants, and if I had, a don’t think I would have bought them. Why should I? I got zero service.

Then recently I went shopping at Wrentham Outlet just outside Boston. Like many women I know, I hate buying jeans. I love my jeans, use them a lot, but hate trying them on. But as I was in the land of the blue jeans, and there was a huge Levi’s store with great deals, I figured I’d undertake the torture of jeans shopping.

I entered the store with my heart thumping and anxiety levels spiking. Confused I scanned shelves after shelves of jeans and tried to tell myself it would be all right. [Read more…]