There’s a situation that went down today which is kind of embarrassing. The word of my foolishness is fast spreading, and I need to get ahead of this by telling my side of the story via my blog. This definitely isn’t the coolest thing I’ve ever done, but if I can’t write about it, then there was absolutely no point in it even happening.
The afternoon started innocently enough. My wife and I were having lunch together at a pretty nice restaurant, and I remember that the beer I ordered had inspired a blog topic I was happy to have as it was already mid-day, and if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that Monday is blog day come hell or high water. That particular blog topic will now have to wait until next week providing I still remember it, but I will remember it, because I’ve written it down. Here. Just now. In this paragraph. When lunch was over, we were walking out to the car. My wife had an appointment, but we had 10 minutes before we had to leave the shopping area we were in. She had a store she wanted to go into, as did I. So we went our separate ways for a few minutes.
The store I wanted to go into was called Teavana. I don’t know much about these stores, but they seem to have been popping up all over the place. I’m a little out of touch with current trends, but I’m guessing the popularity of loose leaf tea is growing in these parts. As it should. We’ve recently acquired a Tea Press, and a few bags of different teas to try. It’s a bit of a nuisance to be honest due to the brewing variance between different types, but the teas I’ve tried have been really good, and I’ve gotten into a bit of a habit of drinking loose leaf tea in the evenings now. I can’t tell why I like this. Maybe because it’s a superior product, but sadly it’s probably because I just think it’s cool.
When I walked into Teavana, I saw their sample dispensers outside the front door. This was an outdoor mall, so the bees were going to town on these dispensers. I decided against having a sample. I went in thinking I would get a couple of new teas to try. Not because we need them. I have a few in the queue already, but I keep thinking ‘when’s the next time I’ll see a tea shop?’ even though I’ve been seeing one pretty much every week. The staff were friendly and eager to help me right off the bat. I told them the truth. That I was new at this, and looking to try a couple of new teas. I also mentioned to stay away from fruit/citrus varieties because my wife thinks they taste like “hot juice”.
I have to preamble this next part by mentioning that I’ve worked in Retail at various points in my life, and have a a lot of respect for a great salesperson with amazing customer service. You would think I’d be numb to this, but I see it done really well so infrequently that I’m actually quite succeptable to their charms, and will buy just about anything that they sell as long as I like the sales pitch. The guy at Teavana was amazing. He totally took charge and pulled out 4 of his favorite varieties. He started telling me about the different ones, and let me have a whiff of the aromas. One of them we’d already tried, and one of them didn’t smell that great to me, so I settled on the other two. I was kind of zoning out and looking around the store at all the accessories when he was explaining some of the teas. I could have sworn he said that one of them was hand picked by Monkeys that were trained by Monks to pick tea. I was caught up. These are gonna be awesome. Then the salesperson was asking if I wanted X amount in order to get a quantity discount. Again, not paying too much attention to the details of the transaction, but just taking in the atmosphere of the store, and thinking about drinking my monkey picked tea later on, I was like ‘yeah man, get me the quantity discount’. I was on some sort of purchasing high. I can only assume that people feel this way right before they buy fur coats. So he scoops this tea into a couple of bags while trying to up-sell me an airtight container, and a tea press and who knows what else. ‘I’m good man, just the tea’ I say, as I’m marveling at this guys sales techniques. He rings it in and says $201.00. Then it hit me…….WHAT IN GOD’S NAME AM I DOING BUYING $200 worth of tea??? I’m really embarrassed at this point, because my wife is now in the store, and I don’t know if she heard that, but as much as I love this guy as a sales person, I just can’t take $200 worth of tea.
To say I don’t know where it all went wrong wouldn’t even be true. I could act like the victim here, but the truth is, this transaction spiraled out of control due to my lazy mind thinking about things other than what I was doing, and while this guy did talk really fast, I was making no attempt to do a mental tally of the cost of this tea adventure. All I kept thinking was, ‘It’s Tea, how much could it possibly be?’ So I had to back peddle and tell the guy that I couldn’t take that much. I apologized and asked him to cut the quantaties in half so I could save face a bit. Unfortunately that still meant that I was spending $100 on tea which was still wildly unreasonable, but at this point I’d committed to it and was willing to take it as a loss. My wife was a good sport as the transaction was happening, because she would have been well within her rights to step in and get that total down to $40. She instead decided to take it out on me by laughing at me all the way home, and for the rest of the day leading up to this very minute. She’s told all of her friends about this encounter, and they are all having jokes at my expense.
‘Laugh all you want’ is my attitude. I’m going to be enjoying my monkey picked tea in the dark, by candle light, with cucumber slices on my eyes, listening to Miles Davis, basking in the unparalleled bliss that can only be achieved through purchasing $100 worth of loose leaf tea on a Monday afternoon. Any of you mouth breathing, simple minded, diet coke drinking haters that have a problem with that will never know the true secret to peace and happiness!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not buying that?? Fine! I screwed up. The worst part is that through further research I found out that monkeys picking tea is only legend, and today just terminology for premium quality tea.
Get your laughs in.
Illustration of the legend of monkeys harvesting tea – from Wikipedia
thoughtsandrantsinjoggingpants 
September 10th, 2013 at 3:42 am
Outstanding story T&RIJP.
I did not know that you were so refined.
As to my mocking you.or making jokes at your expense, I will decline. First of all you have made it far too easy, but more than that; you were willing to take it like a man. As hard as it is to remove the image of you in a hot bath drinking tea with cucumber slices on your eyes, You have exhibited much security in your manhood, and I for one respect the shit out of that. So keep your pimp hand strong brother.
September 10th, 2013 at 1:42 pm
Thanks man! The jokes have kind of subsided now, but I think now that I wrote about it, and made the joke at my own expense, it’s not as much fun for other people to get their licks in. Score one point for me 😉
September 10th, 2013 at 5:41 am
Brilliant! Just. Brilliant! I’ve totally been in this situation too. I was in Morocco having a cheeky weekend jaunt with a friend. Which was pretty extravagant in itself but I’d thrown my last bit of student loan at it and thought, “what the hell?” Which meant we didn’t have that much to spend whilst there. Why, then, did we go to look at some shoes in a little shop and end up buying entire outfits, two pairs of shoes each and lots of scarves and trinkets? Persuasive salespeople, that’s why. And they wouldn’t let us backtrack and put anything back. So we gave them all of our money and had to use a card for the rest. Robbed.
September 10th, 2013 at 1:46 pm
Oh that’s funny! My wife and I were trying to remember other times I’ve been swindled like this, and even though we know it has happened, we couldn’t recall an example. This story reminded me of a time that I was in Jamaica, and bought an unreasonable amount of Blue Mountain Coffee off an associate who was acting like she was trying to get me some sneaky little quantity deal that her boss would get her in trouble for, and I fell for it. After I walked out I thought, ‘I bet she does that with EVERYONE!’
September 14th, 2013 at 6:43 am
Ah. A good salesperson can make us lose our senses, damn them!
September 10th, 2013 at 10:41 am
OMG! Hilarious! I totally admire you for admitting your error in the shop – I would have been so embarrassed I would have just paid the money and then panicked later! Hilarious. I so hope the tea is worth it! 🙂
September 10th, 2013 at 1:49 pm
Listen, I was embarrassed, but my wife was in the shop, but not at the cashier with me, and if she found out I just bought $200 worth of tea, it would have gotten WAY more embarrassing for me. I had to deal with a bit of embarrassment just to get it down to $100. Can you imagine how embarrassing it would have been if my wife stepped in and made me do it? Way worse 🙂
September 10th, 2013 at 12:36 pm
I can get you tea from China for nothing. But you’ll have to pick your own human hair, rocks, and fingernails out of them.
September 10th, 2013 at 1:51 pm
OK Susan, but I need a better back story than that and I will pay top dollar!! Do you know any monkeys?
September 11th, 2013 at 12:09 am
I thought the tea came with the monkeys? Isn’t that standard? Like, monkey butlers, with the little Fez hats.
September 11th, 2013 at 12:19 pm
That’s exactly what I pictured as the monkeys who would be fetching my tea leaves.
September 10th, 2013 at 12:48 pm
Very funny story – I think I’ve done similar things, walked from a store completely shell-shocked by an asinine purchase. This is the best rationalization ever: “if I can’t write about it, then there was absolutely no point in it even happening.” Nothing like creating one’s own material!
September 10th, 2013 at 1:52 pm
True! Now if only I was selling advertising on this site, then perhaps the tea would have paid for itself!! 🙂
September 10th, 2013 at 1:23 pm
Dude, you were mesmorized by how good looking your salesperson was! I think it happens to everyone to a certain degree. I wish I was there to witness your guy ring up $200 worth of tea. Great story!
September 10th, 2013 at 1:54 pm
DUDE! It wasn’t even a girl!!!! It was a guy!!! It had nothing to do with being good looking, I was just impressed by the whole store, the ambiance, the product selection, the dream of being a refined gentleman drinking loose leaf tea. They sold me the dream man!!!
September 19th, 2013 at 8:00 am
Hey, don’t beat yourself up too bad. Same thing happened to me, but on a smaller scale. I went to Teavana with the goal of getting many small samples of teas to try out. I ended up spending $40 on only 2 teas that I barely even like. I didn’t realize how much I spent until I walked out. In Teavana’s defense, they said on the phone I can return it within 30 days. I ended up being too busy to return it, so it’s sitting on my counter staring at me each day. They must put something in the air that throws off our thinking. Since then, I have found a local grocery store that sells loose tea with lower prices and more tea.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:01 pm
It’s funny you say smaller scale, because $40 was exactly what I was thinking about spending that day. They’re very clever. It’s good that you found it somewhere else without the spending atmosphere that they’ve created.
September 19th, 2013 at 5:23 pm
Haha, my post makes me look pretty cheap, but my original plan was to walk out spending like $10-$15 on two small packets of tea, and then return for more samples until I found a tea that I love. By the way, did you end up drinking your 2 teas? How were they?
September 20th, 2013 at 2:55 pm
I’ve tried the monkey picked Oolong twice now. It’s decent. Probably not worth the fuss. Haven’t tried the Silver Yin Zhen Pearls yet. I’m told you can brew those ones 3 times. We shall see 🙂