A Shopper's Right to Browse

There’s a salesgirl in an upscale furniture store called Saccaro out in Barra da Tijuca, a neighborhood in the western part of Rio, who seriously needs some sales management skills. For starters, I suggest she read Harry J. Friedman’s best-selling book, No Thanks, I’m Just Looking, to get a feel for how to assess her customers. She might then consider that when customers actually say, "No thanks, we’re just looking," the proper response on her part would be, "Fine, feel free to browse, if you need help just give a shout," rather than the scolding rebuke Mark and I received on a recent shopping trip to Rio, a rebuke that reverberates in my ears to this day.

Me and my shadow

But let me back up for a moment. This is not the first time in Brazil that we’ve come up against a clash of ideas about what constitutes good customer service. I’ve written about it before (April 5, 2012 blogpost) and I’ll probably write about it again. For me, the act of shopping, or browsing, is often more fun than the final buying. But Brazil is less addicted to recreational shopping, and their language reflects that. Portuguese makes no real distinction between "shopping" (fazendo compras) and "buying" (comprar), and there’s no specific word for "browse" either. The expression olhar sem compromisso (to look without obligation) misses the deeply satisfying "browsiness" of a good browse. Leave me to my own devices and who knows but that I won’t buy something I wasn’t intending to buy. But in Brazil most salespeople can’t just leave you alone, they must follow you around the store in case you have an urgent question, they point out things you don’t need to have pointed out, and explain things you don’t need to have explained. I don’t know, I for one can’t shop if I'm being watched and followed, period.

So here’s what happened at Saccaro, the furniture store Mark and I entered in our ongoing search for chairs:

Salesgirl:  Good morning, may I help you?

Us:  Good morning. We’re just looking, thanks. (Oh, please, just let us browse.)

Salesgirl:  Well, I’ll accompany you and show you what the store has. (Foreigners, I knew it.)

Us:  That’s okay, we can see what you have, and we know what we’re looking for. We’ll let you know if we have any questions. (Sweetheart, it’s a furniture store, you have tables and chairs and sofas. Duh.)

[We start to walk off, the salesgirl begins to follow.]

Salesgirl:  Here we have our veranda furniture . . .

Us:  Yes, we can see that. Really, it’s not necessary to accompany us. (Leave us alone!)

Salesgirl:  I have to accompany you. It’s my job, and you don’t know the store. (Foreigners, they always think they know everything.)

Us:  Actually, we do know the store, we’ve been here before, we bought a beautiful piece here a few years ago. So really, if you just let us shop . . . (Oh, this is ridiculous!)

[We walk off again, salesgirl continues to follow, albeit quietly. But she can’t help herself . . .]

Salesgirl:  Over there is our home theater area . . .

Us:  We have no interest in your home theater area, we’re looking for very particular chairs, we'll know them when we see them, and you're being very distracting. (Doesn’t she want to make a sale?)

Salesgirl:  Look, I can’t let you walk around unattended, we consider that to be very rude. Let me explain something you don’t understand. I know that you’re foreigners, maybe it’s different in your country, but you’re in Brazil now . . .

Us:  Actually, we live in Brazil, we’ve lived in Brazil for 11 years and we’re very familiar . . . (Now she's going to lecture us?)

Salesgirl:  . . . and this is how it’s done in Brazil. We are here to serve you, to attend to your needs, and show you the store, and let me also say that our Brazilian customers are very happy with the way we take care of them.  If you live here, you should know to do things the Brazilian way! (So there.)

[We'd had it. We walked out of the store and she lost any chance of a good sale. Not exactly tensions on the Gaza Strip, but one more sorry story of one side not understanding the other.]

Our first and now last Saccaro purchase

Resupplying in Rio

There are dozens of reasons for people who live here in Búzios, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Rio, to make the trip in to the big city. Some people go in to visit with relatives, some to suffer through dental appointments, some to pick visitors up at the airport; others see Rio as the go-to place for cultural experiences, be they art exhibits, music shows, movies or plays; people go in for the usual round of life events, like weddings, births, graduations and funerals. Mark and I have been known to go to Rio for the occasional blood test. But more often than not our reason for going is more prosaic. We use Rio as our quartermaster depot. We go to Rio quite simply to resupply.

Not that a person can’t get plenty of stuff in Búzios, a person can. We’ve got supermarkets and stores aplenty, with another new supermarket being built as I write. But if you’re particular about your brands and, in addition, are somewhat economy-minded, nothing beats a resupply trip to Rio. Prices in Búzios are currently artificially high, and that coupled with the small number of brand options is all the reason I need to jump into the car and go.

Zona Sul discount badge

Our first stops are usually the two supermarkets Zona Sul and Pão de Açucar, both of which now count Mark and me as registered "members" (hey, discounts!). We load a shopping cart to the brim with our favorite brands of pasta and plum tomato sauce and haul it to the check-out counter, where we are often looked at quizzically. I remember once the cashier looked at our 25 bags of pasta, looked at us, and said, "You’re Italian, right?"

Enough pasta for 45 dinners, and plenty of wine to wash it down

Then we make our way to Carioca Zen, the only store in Rio that carries both chickpea flour and the Indian butter known as "ghee," both essential to Indian cookery. Another successful shopping spree. Then off to Mundial, a fairly downscale supermarket where we recently discovered the wine prices to be amazingly low and the wine selection surprisingly sophisticated. There we fill two or three cartons with enough bottles to last until the next trip (we hope!). At the Mundial checkout counter our clanking bottles call a lot of attention to our purchase. Some people might generously think we run a restaurant, but plenty of others raise an eyebrow or two.



So basic, so un-findable

By now the trunk is pretty full, but there’s always room for some discretionary shopping. I have to feed my reading needs and stock up at my favorite used-book store. Every so often I run low on my Paul Mitchell Super Sculpt Glaze and we find ourselves searching for a parking space in Leblon, as near as possible to the only store that sells Paul Mitchell products. And then there’s always some specialty item that seems to stay on my shopping list for months and months, never to be crossed off, because there’s just no finding it easily. For example, right now I’m in search of a pastry cutter — anybody have any ideas?