passing through

Being a people-lover does not mean you don’t appreciate those that merely walk into the shop and then walk out five minutes later—never to be seen again by your eyes. Often times, you will be grateful that you never see them again because you could never look that person in the eye without having to analyze them to give a final attempt at understanding their internal processor. Recently, I’ve had several individuals come in that baffled me completely. Here are a few stories of these memorable individuals.

A few days ago, a woman walked into the fudge shop and was completely excited at the sight of fudge. She was carefully reading each sign, “oooing” and “ahhing” over each delectable flavor of fudge. Several of her friends followed her into the shop a minute later, and of course, the noise level quadrupled as they all raved over the appearance of chocolate. It seemed like their lives were all fulfilled. Chocolate was before them, what more could they ask for? I can think of one thing they could ask for—a chance to forget the diet they were each on. Slowly, they all started walking away, bemoaning the fact that they couldn’t justify fudge. Interestingly, they left behind the first woman who had come in. She still stood at the counter, drooling at the sight of the chocolate. I offered her a sample, but she told me “no thank you.” A few minutes later, my assistant came back from a break, and saw this woman at the counter that I was apparently ignoring. She washed her hands and walked right to the counter and asked, “May I get you a sample?” The woman looked at her with a surprised expression and told her, “No, thank you, but I don’t like fudge at all! I don’t know how anyone can eat all that sweet stuff!!” She then turned, and walked out.

A man came into the shop carrying his son. The little boy must have been about 6 months old. Certainly no older! The father was carefully studying the fudge product and holding the little boy over his shoulder. I walked up to the counter and greeted them and then asked (while making eye-contact with the man), “Would you care for a sample of fudge, sir?” The man looked at me with the most perplexed look on his face, and took the little boy down where he could see his face and then looked back at me and said, “No thanks, I think he’s too young to have fudge.” I’m not sure if I really seemed that stupid to the man, but why would I offer a child that young a piece of chocolate even if I were stupid? I didn’t express that thought though, seeing that the customer is always right. I humored the guy and said, “Oh, ok. Would you like one then?” He turned me down in fear his wife would hear about it from him and want to come get some.

Another customer that had me completely confused was one that came in and told me that he’d seen a sign somewhere that we had imported chocolate. I explained that our cocoa was not American, that we shipped it in from outside the US. He took a look at the fudge case then and asked, “So do you make all of the fudge here then?” I told him yes, and he fired right back, “Then which fudge did you import? Your sign said you had imported chocolate.” I went back to the cocoa story and explained how we shipped our cocoa over from Europe. That seemed to make sense to the man. “Oh, so you use imported cocoa in the chocolate you make here.” Yes! He got it… so I hoped. Wrong. “So, do you import any of these fudges then? The sign said imported chocolate…”

Often, tourists will ask how to get to the beach of Lake Michigan. I’ve given directions to the beach so many times I think I could do it in my sleep. The best though is when you get people who have no clue how to handle directions like “go south on this road, turn right onto that road, turn left on that road, and then turn right into the beach park’s parking lot.” (I do use the actual street names.) Recently, I had some very directionally challenged people come ask for directions to the beach. They seemed determined to get these directions to stick in their head. (They didn’t want to write it down.) I gave them, very clearly, and they interrupted me at every breath I took to rehash everything up to that point again. They were not getting it at all. I kept trying again and again, but it was useless. Finally I had two others that were working help me out and try to get them there. That merely confused them more. Finally the guy put his hand up and said, “It’s ok, we’ll figure it out. We’ve got a GPS, and we looked it up on google maps and according to that, the GPS is correct, so we’ll just follow that. We just weren’t sure if it was the best route.”

My favorite tourist quote: “Does the altitude change here?”