The manager of a furniture store shared an anecdote to help illustrate how it’s possible to lay claim to an item you’d like to buy without just sitting in it and refusing to move. In the process, she showed how she supposedly handled a man who tried just that tactic—trying to edge out a pregnant woman who wanted the same rocking chair.
The story comes from creator Kaelin (@whatsinthekoolaid), who cheerfully enacts all the roles in the nearly four-minute video, which was posted on TikTok on Saturday and has received more than 7 million views since. In it, she first dispenses the advice that her store goes by and then details a conflict that she says she had to mediate as a manager.
“If you want to buy something, you just grab the tag, and then it’s yours as long as you’re in the store, and you have that tag,” she explains to kick off her video, “and then you just come to register whenever you’re ready, and you pay for it.”
Kaelin says a pregnant woman coveting a rocking chair landed on the one she liked after trying out everything the store had to offer, grabbed the tag, and found the manager. The manager confirmed that she was following the process; however, there was reportedly a man in the chair who believed that because he was sitting in the chair, he had sufficiently laid claim to it.
“OK, so, first thing I want to say, don’t worry, this chair is going to leave with you today,” Kaelin counsels the preferred customer. “Not a problem at all. Second thing, I have been itching to yell at a man lately, so this is going to be delightful. Third, why don’t we cash it out right now? I’ll take care of the rest.”
They make the transaction, and then the manager walks over to where the man is still sitting, which she’s depicted by donning what she describes as a “questionably-sized hat.” She depicts him as having a “lead paint stare.”
“Do you mind standing up?” she asks the man. “That chair’s actually just been sold, and they gotta get it out the door.”
The man asserts, “I’m gonna buy this chair.”
She says, “So the thing about that is that you can’t because it’s already been sold. So do you mind just getting up so I can take it to the person who bought it?”
The man wonders who he can talk to about this injustice. Kaelin convinces him to get up with the promise that she’ll help him, but she says she instead clocked out for lunch after convincing him to go to the front of the store to meet her.
i think customers like this think “you know what? its been a hot minute since i deliberately ruined a stranger’s shopping experience” and then sprint to the nearest store 🏃♂️
According to the site, “90 percent of today’s consumers start their path to purchase by browsing online,” and despite the importance of furniture showrooms in some customers’ journeys, “a furniture buyer visits an average of 1.8 showrooms before making a purchase — much less than 10 years ago.”
Commenters reacted to the exchange.
“‘I’ve been dying to yell at a man’ is so real,” one observed.
Another said, “The lead paint stare took me out.”
Yet another felt the pain of working with customers, noting, “Dude. This one hit hard. It’s the literal personification of retail.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Kaelin via Instagram direct message.
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*First Published: May 27, 2024, 10:00 pm CDT
Phil West is a veteran professional writer and editor, and the author of two books on soccer, ‘The United States of Soccer,’ and ‘I Believe That We Will Win,’ both from The Overlook Press. His work has appeared most recently in The Striker (where he served as managing editor), MLSSoccer.com, Next City, and Texas Highways. Based in Austin, he is also a lecturer in the Writing Program at the University of Texas at San Antonio.