Not every customer walks into a store because they need to buy something.

This electronics employee noticed an older man who came into the store every week and headed straight for the smart home section. He always had questions about the latest gadgets and happily listened while employees explained how everything worked.

At first, the staff assumed he was researching a future purchase.

Then they started noticing something odd.

The man kept asking about the same products over and over again, even after multiple employees had already explained them to him in detail.

Eventually, one employee gently asked if he planned to buy any of the devices.

Keep reading to see how he replied.

The loneliest customer in the electronics section

I’ve been working at a mid-size electronics store for about three years now. We get all kinds of people, the usual stuff, but there’s this one regular I think about a lot.

His name I obviously can’t share but we all called him “the professor” among ourselves because he always came in wearing the same brown cardigan and carrying a little notepad.

Every single week, sometimes twice a week, he’d walk straight to the smart home section and ask whoever was nearby to explain how the devices worked. Voice assistants, smart bulbs, thermostats, you name it. Full demonstrations, lots of questions, very engaged.

No one paid attention at first.

For the first few months different people on the team kept giving him the full walkthrough each time not realizing he’d already had it. Multiple times. I personally explained the same smart speaker to him at least four times before it clicked.

One slow Tuesday, I finally asked him gently if he’d ever thought about buying one of the devices since he seemed so interested. He got quiet for a second, smiled, and said, “Oh, I don’t really need any of that. My apartment is small, and I live alone.” Then he asked if I had time to show him how the video doorbell worked.

I showed him the doorbell. Took about twenty minutes. He asked good questions and wrote some things in his notepad. Before he left he shook my hand and said it was very helpful and that he’d see me next week.

Then, one day, he just stopped coming in.

He did come back the next week. I was off that day but my coworker mentioned him. Apparently he asked about the doorbell again.

We never pushed a sale. Not once. Some of the managers noticed and let it go without saying anything which I think says somthing nice about the people I work with.

He stopped coming in about four months ago. I don’t know why, and I try not to think about it too much.

Oh no! Let’s hope he’s okay.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a hardware store employee who lost his cool with customers wandering around after closing time.

Let’s see what thoughts the people over at Reddit have about all this.

Yes! Hopefully, this is what happened.

It gets lonely later in life.

That’s enough to make most people sad.

So true.

Sometimes people need conversation more than they need whatever is sitting on the shelf.

The guy probably could’ve bought that smart speaker after the second explanation, let alone the tenth. Instead, he kept coming back every week with the same questions and the same notebook.

But the part that’s sad is that he just stopped showing up one day.

Maybe it means nothing. But it’s easy to see why the employees still wonder about him.