Before explaining the “how”, I’d rather elucidate the readers first, on what I call the “suit and tie status”. Let’s say there’s a guy named Bob (oh come on, everyone uses Bob as a generic name for stories, and you almost certainly have an uncle named Bob too so it’s a familiar name).
On Bob’s day off, Bob puts on his average clothes: shoes, pants, and a shirt and walks into a computer store. After being ignored for 10 minutes, one of the employees finally notices (or pretends to have just noticed) that Bob was in the store. So he walks up to Bob and says the most irritating phrase shop employees can say to customers:
“Can I help you?”
Regardless of which question Bob asks he will be answered in the worst and shortest way imaginable. Unable to empty his wallet Bob leaves the store with a sad expression upon his face.
But Bob is a stubborn man, so on one of his work days, when Bob happens to be using a suit and tie, he walks back into the same store. As soon as he comes in, the clerk is alerted by the security camera that someone with a suit and tie has just entered the store and therefore proceed to put on the patented “happy employee smile” and walk up to the customer with it and change the tape in which they address Bob:
“Good morning sir, and welcome to our store. My name is Marc, and if you need any assistance whatsoever I’d be more than glad to help you out.”
This, my readers, is the “suit and tie” syndrom. Feel free to try it out in real life, it works wonderfully well.
Well today, I experienced a similar effect in the Super Market. I walked in with my laptop backpack and went to the counter for her to keep it there while I went inside to purchase some things. When I was taking off the backpack, I accidentally pulled the phone cord which was connected to my iPod Nano, causing it to fall from my pocket. I bent my knees and picked it up, and when I rose everyone was glaring at me as if they were looking at Tom Cruise.
The lady behind the balcony whispers something to me with the same glare, which I misunderstood to be “You can leave the backpack here”, but then she repeated with a bit higher voice and said “You can take your backpack with you sir”. At this moment I thought to myself “this is odd… I’ve been here like a hundred times and I’m always asked to leave my backpack outside”. I went to pickup some tissues, which were quite near the cash-registers and promptly returned. When I reached the lady in front of me stepped aside and said “please sir, go ahead”.
I thanked the kind lady, and promptly payed my tissues and left and found the clerk that told me to carry the backpack smiling back.
Perhaps if you lived here you’d understand, but this is not normal at all. I don’t feel like dropping my iPod on the floor every time I want to be attended nicely, but it’s certainly worth a shot again in the future.
[tags]iPod, iPod Nano[/tags]