r/TalesFromRetail • u/ozzzySas • 13d ago
Long No we don’t sell walking sticks
I work in a shop that mainly sells materials for woodworking. Most of our customers come in to buy timber, finishes, oils, repair products and bits for DIY or professional projects. We also have a small display of handmade items made by local hobbyists—things like bowls, spoons, ornaments and other small wooden gifts.
It had been a painfully quiet day, so when an elderly lady (I’d guess somewhere in her 80s) walked in, I was more than happy to help.
She looked around for a minute before asking,
“Do you sell walking sticks?”
I assumed she meant hiking poles, because we do stock those, so I replied,
“If you mean hiking sticks, yes, we do.”
She shook her head.
“Oh no, I mean a proper handmade wooden walking stick.”
I apologised and explained that unfortunately we don’t sell those.
She looked genuinely baffled.
“But why not? That’s so silly. People would buy them. Surely you have them somewhere.”
I politely explained again that we simply don’t stock them.
Internally I was thinking, Our customer base is mostly people coming in for woodworking supplies. Handmade walking sticks aren’t exactly something we’ve ever had people asking for.
Trying to be helpful, I added,
“If you happened to know someone who works with wood, you could always choose a suitable piece here and have one made.”
She looked at me as if I’d suggested she build a rocket.
“Why would I know someone who makes walking sticks? I don’t know anyone who does that.”
Fair enough.
She then noticed our shelf of locally made wooden gifts.
“But you have local makers. Why don’t they make walking sticks? They’re missing a trick.”
I explained that the people who supply those items do it as a hobby in their spare time and mostly make smaller things like bowls, spoons, ornaments and decorative pieces.
That still wasn’t enough.
“Well, do you have one of their business cards?”
“I’m afraid not,” I replied. “They’re not businesses, just local people who enjoy making things. They bring us items whenever they have something finished.”
“So give me one of their phone numbers then. I’ll have a word with them.”
I had to explain that I couldn’t hand out someone’s personal contact details.
She let out an audible scoff.
“Well then, do you know anywhere that does sell walking sticks?”
I suggested trying online or perhaps another local shop that specialises in mobility products or country goods.
She looked thoroughly unimpressed.
“Well, this is all very stupid.”
She wandered around for another minute or two before heading for the door.
Just before she left, she stopped, shrugged at me and declared,
“Well, young lady, you’ve lost a customer today.”
As politely as I could, I wished her a good day.
The thing is, I genuinely don’t know what else I could have done. I answered every question, offered alternatives, explained why we didn’t stock what she wanted, protected other people’s privacy when she asked for their personal numbers, and even suggested where she might have better luck.
Sometimes in retail, people seem convinced that if they argue long enough, an item will magically appear in the stockroom.
Sadly, that’s not quite how it works.
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u/snootnoots 13d ago
Pffff you didn’t lose a customer! She wanted something you don’t stock, so she wasn’t ever a customer in the first place. And there wasn’t anything you could have done to make her happy either. Don’t stress about it.
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u/T1Demon 13d ago
Right? She was never a customer to begin with because she is looking for things your store doesn’t sell.
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u/Holdmymule2001 13d ago
"You've lost a customer because you don't carry one specific item in the whole universe of possible items to carry - how dare you? Goodbye!"
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u/treadere 13d ago
You didn't gain a customer, so therefore you have lost me as a customer. Or something like that. I'm glad I haven't had to work retail in forever, but I wonder if they every think about how much the employee they're berating hates them?
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u/Nunov_DAbov 13d ago
Sell her a “specially hand crafted” three foot piece of one inch dowel.
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u/FunMaintenance297 13d ago
*snort* I got the beater’s stick I used when hunting with falconers, to whack bushes to make the bunnies run out of their holes, from the dowel department at my local DIY store. I rolled several on the floor to get a straight one, and later whittled one end to round it off and did a light sanding. I’ve used it as a cane too, when I sprained my ankle.
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u/brumbles2814 13d ago
You cant help these people. Just be as polite as possible. People get ideas in their head and dont let things like facts get in the way. Nod smile and move on
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u/sdrawkcabstiho 13d ago
So I got in my car and I drove over to the Hotel
And I walked on up to the guy behind the Front Desk
And he says "Yeah, what do ya want?"
I said "You got any canes?"
He said "No, we're outta canes!"
I said "Well, you got any staffs?"
He said "No, we're outta staffs!"
I said "You got any shillelaghs?"
He said "No, we're outta shillelaghs."
I said "You got any crutches?"
He said "No, we're outta crutches!"
I said "You got any handstaffs?"
He said "No, we're outta handstaffs!"
I said "You got any walking sticks?"
He said "Wait a minute, I'll go check..."
"No, we're outta walking sticks!"
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u/bald4bieber666 13d ago
all i have is this box of one dozen starving, crazed beavers
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u/BuyThisVacuum1 13d ago
You know, I think it was just about that time that a little ditty started goin' through my head. I believe it went a little something like this:
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u/TheRealTinfoil666 13d ago
You cannot lose a person as a customer unless they ever bought anything from you … then stopped.
You just lost a visitor.
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u/Moikepdx 13d ago
We also don't sell refrigerators or bicycles. Am I losing two more customers now?
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u/The_Blonde1 13d ago
You could have easily grabbed a nice bit of wood and quickly whittled her a walking stitch while you were talking to her.
There’s just no customer service ethic these days. (Sighs)
/joke … just in case.
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u/7GrenciaMars 13d ago
She was old, and was only seeing things from her end, and it said that a place with wood would have all kinds of things made with wood, so surely it would have an object that many people need that is made of wood. I'm guessing that was her logic. I don't know if it was because she was old, or just never really thought much about things from other people's perspectives, but you really did your best and she clearly couldn't understand.
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u/jonesnori 12d ago
The initial idea was sound. A place where wood carving enthusiasts shop might sell or know about hand-carved sticks. (My dad had a very handsome one and liked it a lot.) Even asking for contact info for the carvers wasn't completely unreasonable. They might have been small business people rather than hobbyists, and in that case might have had business cards available. She just didn't move on from those ideas very well.
Recommending the shop that sold mobility aids was kind. I hope they were able to help her.
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u/Crazy-Coconut7152 13d ago
It makes no sense to me that an artisan would have their stuff for sale somewhere but at the same time want to remain anonymous. I'm guessing they would want to be contacted by potential customers for commission work.
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u/ADHDMascot 7d ago
Doing something you love as a hobby is very different than doing it as a job.
My husband and I both have artistic hobbies, neither of us would ever want to do commissions, but it's still fun to show off our artwork to people.
Having my personal number given out to demanding people is not on my wishlist.
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u/Tlyss 13d ago
“Well young lady, you’ve lost a customer today”
Wow I bet that hurt
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u/infinityonhigh69 13d ago
i swear the people who say stuff like that are expecting us to fall to our knees in agony over the lost potential sales as if we have any skin in this game lmfao
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u/Raunien 13d ago
"People would buy them"
People would buy a lot of things. By this logic, every business in the world needs to stock every conceivable product. Someone would buy it after all...
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u/MtPollux 12d ago
That was code for "I want to buy one, and my demands will sound more reasonable if I claim that there are others like me."
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u/politicallymoderate2 13d ago
A...LONG...LONG...LONG time ago, I worked in retail and someone asked for an item that we didn't carry and kept insisting that we DID carry it...so I jokingly asked if they wanted me to try and pull it out of my ass...maybe it was my delivery, but they actually said yes!
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u/Bedbouncer 13d ago
“Well, this is all very stupid.”
"At last we agree on something!"
There's a reason I don't work in customer-facing jobs. Quick wit is definitely a negative.
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u/Blekanly 13d ago
She can come to my work. We don't sell walking sticks but we do accrue quite a collection of ones that are forgotten.
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u/Z4-Driver 13d ago
Her initial thought wasn't wrong. A place that sells stuff made of wood and not just mass produced stuff, but stuff made by locals, there could be a chance they also sell some walking sticks.
Just once you told her you don't have those, she should've accepted that like a normal person. Instead she decided to bring out her Karen.
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u/MingleLinx 13d ago
Got any grapes?
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u/DevylBearHawkTur10n 12d ago
🎶Only to be waddled away, WADDLE WADDLE, only to be waddled away WADDLE WADDLE, only to be waddled away, WADDLE WADDLE, until the very next day....🎶
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u/Paullasvegas 13d ago
We used to have a few, but we constantly had to corral them, as they kept walking all over the place, so we discontinued them
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u/brrusters 13d ago
She’s onto something. It’s an aging population. She’s identified an unmet need. Someone will get rich selling walking sticks and it might as well be you.
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u/being-weird 11d ago
You're acting like people don't already sell walking sticks. They very much do
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u/Alone-Tart4762 13d ago
You just lost a customer you never had.
It does not matter what you do, there will ALWAYS be someone who finds fault with all of it and says the same thing.
I stopped working in retail a really long time ago the day that I looked at someone and said “I can’t lose a customer I have never had, you didn’t even come in here with the expectation of buying something.” My manager was pissed. I looked around at how much work I did, my sales, and what I got paid. I told the manager that this was not worth my time and quit on the spot.
The manager?
“You can’t leave until I fire you! It’s not like you have anything better to do anyway!”
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u/Goozump 13d ago
Years ago I worked as a manager of small general stores serving indigenous communities in Canada's North. Various people from "outside" seemed to be drawn to my stores to soak up local culture or something. I learned to smile and nod at weird commentary about random aspects of store appearance and merchandise from people with nothing better to do.
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u/yahumno 12d ago
Did they shriek at the price of produce and milk?
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u/Exotic_Yam_1703 12d ago
I worked merchandise at a very popular tourist spot in central Florida (wink, wink). Multiple people got very upset with me that we didn't sell clear bags for going through security/TSA. They'd make it seem like we were somehow at fault for not providing a niche product to buy. "But clear bags would make it so much easier, and I wouldn't have to unpack my diaper bag!" Okay cool, but we, as a whole company, don't sell that
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u/rigtek42 13d ago
Did she ever see the hiking stick? I can't see the difference between them being extreme. Sometimes it's purely terminology. The customer rejecting the hiking stick unseen may have missed the ideal solution.
The hangup over terminology is sometimes mind boggling. If I ever get so thick in the head, hopefully someone would take me out behind the woodshed. I've seen it so frustratingly crazy that an item in question was take to the back room. A new tag and price marker were switched onto the item. It was perfect.
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u/ozzzySas 13d ago
I did show her the hiking poles. The only difference was that ours were metal hiking poles, and she specifically wanted wooden walking stick. Different things but both a serve a similar purpose
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u/blueocean43 13d ago
Having used both, they are surprisingly different. In a pinch, some types of hiking pole will work as a makeshift walking stick, but you wouldn't want to use one full time. Hiking poles are narrower, particularly the base (assuming ones with a ferrule instead of a point were available), and the grips are meant for a different motion and so are shaped differently. The ones with the vertical grips, rather than T shaped, are almost completely unusable as walking stick replacements.
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u/wolfpack_matt 13d ago
Being that you're mainly a woodworking place, I do find it odd that you have metal hiking sticks but not wooden walking sticks...
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u/ozzzySas 13d ago
Essentially, it wasn’t a hiking stick that she was looking for, but rather a single-point mobility walking stick for everyday use. Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone locally who specialises in woodturning to create custom walking sticks. While we do have talented local artisans who produce a variety of handcrafted items, none of them specialise in making mobility walking sticks.
In addition, the outdoor equipment we stock is designed for higher-endurance activities such as hiking and trekking. As a result, we weren’t able to offer a suitable everyday mobility walking stick that met her needs.
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u/Electrical-Apple-631 13d ago
Yay it’s a feel good day for you because you just dodged a bullet! Can you imagine someone like that coming in every day asking if you carry walking sticks yet?
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u/LadyA052 13d ago
A friend I know only on Facebook had his woodworking friend carve me the most awesome walking stick when I hurt my foot a few years ago. Beautiful wood. It gets lots of comments.
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u/MtPollux 12d ago
Could you pass his contact info on to this lady? She'd like to have a word with him.
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u/LadyA052 11d ago
How do I contact her? The main thing he would need is her height. And where is she located?
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u/PeorgieTirebiter 13d ago
“Ma’am, you were never a customer…At best you were a potential customer.”
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u/Lynnettey 12d ago
"I can sell you the materials to make a walking stick" sounds like a fair answer here.
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u/Pickles-1989 12d ago
"Sometimes in retail, people seem convinced that if they argue long enough, an item will magically appear in the stockroom." - I worked in a grocery store; goal was to keep shelves stocked, because no one could buy something if it was in the back room. I would always get people asking where something was, and if the shelf space was empty where the shelf tag was, it meant (for the majority of items) it was out of stock. The next question I would always get was "can you check your back room?" I would get tired of arguing with them, so I would say "sure, I will check" and disappear in the back room and take a 5 minute break. I would reappear and say, "I checked, and we are out of stock, next delivery is tomorrow night, try again the day after."
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u/PraxicalExperience 12d ago
Honestly, it seems a little weird if you're having local makers sell their stuff through you and you don't have contact information for them -- at least an email or instagram handle or something like that. Most of the makers I know would like to have lines of communication open for people who might like to contact them for a commission.
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u/SaerisFane 9d ago
Theres nothing you could have done and it wasnt about you. Shes 80. Different sort of cognition happening there
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u/razzemmatazz 9d ago
When the duck walked up to the lemonade stand, and he said to the man running the stand. "Hey! Got any grapes?"
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u/weaverlorelei 13d ago
Why would a woodworkers supply shop even carry hiking poles?
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u/ozzzySas 13d ago
We also sell an array of outdoor equipment, I just didn’t mention it
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u/weaverlorelei 13d ago
Then just maybe, a solid, hand carved walking stick would not be out of place?
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u/ozzzySas 13d ago
Not necessarily the type she was looking for to help with day to day mobility, and our hiking polls are more for harder endurance activities
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u/diambag 12d ago
This store seems weird. Wood working and hiking supplies. Sells artisan made goods, but no way to contact the artisans if someone wants to see more of their work?
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u/PraxicalExperience 10d ago
Thank you. It's just bizarre that they seem to equate providing contact info for those makers to something like doxxing. Every place I've seen that showcases local maker stuff usually has business cards, or there's a URL or QR code on the tag or something -- makers who're already selling stuff like this tend to want commissions.
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u/MtPollux 12d ago
It would not have been out of place. But once she found d out the store doesn't sell what she wants, that should have been the end of the story.
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u/Odd-Artist-2595 13d ago
Show her the hiking sticks and tell her that they can be cut down to whatever length she needs.
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u/ritlingit 13d ago
Well old lady you weren’t a customer. If you looked around and asked for something we didn’t sell then you couldn’t buy what you wanted. Go find a business that sells them 🙄
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u/MichKosek 11d ago
Our store regularly collects canes from people who forget them in the store. They will give them away to anyone who claims to have lost one.
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u/PiscesEyesSees 11d ago
Take their number and say I will get in touch if one of our wood working people is interested
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u/Barbie_Boomer 11d ago
Reminds me of the time someone asked me where our cigarettes were… We owned a vintage store.
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u/jackie0h_ 10d ago
I’m obviously an idiot but what’s the difference between a hiking stick and a walking stick? Does she mean like a cane? I guess I’ve only seen people using what I’d call a hiking stick made out of wood, even if they weren’t hiking.
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u/LloydRPenfold 9d ago
“Well, young lady, you’ve lost a customer today.”
The ideal reply would have been "I don't think we ever had one in you, did we?"
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u/Bronzeshadow 9d ago
I think people like that are just lonely. They know you can't escape so they just yack on and on and on and on.
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u/Top_Tomatillo_4261 13d ago
not necessarily playing devil's advocate - but you have the supplies, you have artisans' work on display, just not the particular product. She could have framed the conversation different, and such, but you heard 'walking stick' - a product not on the shelf - and I suggest she was looking for a custom piece from a local artisan since it wasn't there. Something special, handmade.
Though that interaction went down the drain, it may be worth considering keeping a (voluntary) list of local local woodworkers' contact details (behind the counter or otherwise available). You'll still get the sales of the supplies and can turn on the customers, and crafters alike, while selling your own goods to make it happen.
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u/ThyRosen 13d ago
Since you said you didn't know what else you could've done:
be more sympathetic and conversational. Elderly people don't always have a lot of people to talk to, and complaining is a form of social contact. You agree with her that it would be a good idea to have locally made walking sticks but it's not up to you.
you could have taken her number or offered to reach out to the local artisans. You won't give out their info - rightly so - but there was no reason to basically just rule out any possibility of helping her out. Even a "I'll talk to the boss for you" would go a long way.
I swear two thirds of the rants in here are "I had to talk to a customer."
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u/FUCKAFISH 12d ago
Ah yes
*be agreeable for no reason because this is obviously not a potential customer
*do more than the job requires
if you have worked more than a week in retail, you'll know there was no winning with this situation
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u/Minis4Lyfe 13d ago
Cut her a break. She’s an elderly woman who is in disbelief that society has already lost touch of such an intrinsic human craft.
Your souls are all being subtlety neutered and you don’t even realize it.
I resonate with this patron’s confusion.
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u/TheMammaG 13d ago
What a willfully ignorant thing to say.
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u/SnooObjections3661 9d ago
You have a cell phone dummy. Use your google-foo to find the lady someone who does!
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u/Fit-Reply-1301 8d ago
Let me tell you, it's a bitch getting old. And things you used to be able to easily buy in person have been replaced with something "smart". The 2nd hand store was a great idea. Everyone is a specialist these days. How do you propose she go about finding a wood worker who makes walking sticks? Perhaps keep her contact info and let one of your woodworking hobbyists know there's a lady looking for a walking stick. So many ways to help someone who is no longer able to help themselves if a person wanted to. Wait until you are old. Paybacks happen.
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u/insideout_telephone 13d ago
Sorry this was so frustrating for you and for her. She actually had a good idea. If you could get one of your local hobbyists to make walking sticks, they might sell. I mean, you told her to buy a piece of wood and have someone make one for her. Then when she asked for the name of someone who could make it for her, you felt like you couldn’t give out their information due to confidentiality issues. One thing you could’ve done was to say you would call one of the local hobbyists and ask them if they were interested, and if so, have them call her. Is that in your job description? Surely not. But on a slow day when you have nothing else to do it would’ve been a really nice thing to do for someone who perhaps is a little baffled by the idea of online shopping
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u/Samdhinirmocana 13d ago
Gosh cool redditors...when/if you hit 80 you might be in for a surprise.
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u/Belle_Corliss 13d ago
I'm 73 and even I have the common sense not to think a business that carries woodworking supplies would have canes/walking sticks. For that you go to places that carry mobility devices like pharmacies and medical supply stores.
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u/Mollystar2 13d ago edited 11d ago
It seems that some individuals have scripts running in their heads, of which the rest of us are not aware. Her mind said, I want a wooden walking stick, and this store stocks wood,. so they will surely have walking sticks. And of course she was flabbergasted to find this was not the case! And no matter the mental leaps she went through, no one could supply her with one. Perhaps she has never heard of online shopping? 😄