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Retail signage can only help customers who briefly observe the world directly in front of them.

During a winter storm rush, shoppers repeatedly requested pipe insulation and faucet covers displayed mere feet away.

Instead of noticing the enormous boxes and signs, they kept asking the employee where everything was located.

Read on for the full story.

People are unbelievably oblivious to their surroundings

I work at a big home improvement store on the US Gulf coast.

A few weeks ago we had a big winter storm come in, so I was putting out several boxes of pipe insulation, pipe wrap and faucet covers out on the main aisles (we always get tons of people looking to buy these whenever the weather drops below freezing).

We put giant endcaps out, right in front of the checkout lanes.

We had so many boxes taking up practically the whole front of the store.

The customers clearly weren’t paying attention.

But I still had so many customers walk right in, come right up to me, and ask “Where is the piping insulation… do you guys have faucet covers?? ” etc..

I’m literally standing like 5 feet away from, with a box cutter, opening all these boxes for display.

I was wondering if maybe it’s because our faucet covers are colored weird (so maybe people didn’t recognize them), but we also had big signs on the boxes, and the pipe insulation and everything else looked normal and was in plain sight.

It was far from just one person who asked.

And people kept asking over and over.

It took all my self-control to not say something snarky.

Eventually, after like 20 people doing this – completely blind to their surroundings – I really start to worry about the future of civilization. Crazy.

From a customer’s perspective, I can somewhat understand this.

To the employee, it was obvious, but if the customer is unfamiliar with the store, or even more likely, familiar with the store, they may think it’s easier to ask for help then look for themselves.

In this case, the products were also moved to end caps at the front of the store, so it’s possible that customers went to look wherever the products are usually on display and couldn’t find them.

That said, I could see how it could be really frustrating to have customers ask the same question over and over again all day when the answer seems terribly obvious.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Here’s another story about oblivious customers.

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This woman’s boyfriend is the type of person to ask employees before even trying to look on his own.

Another person doesn’t understand this perspective.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a delivery driver who tried warning his boss the truck needed new brakes and tires, only to find his truck sidelined during their busiest season.

Here’s a story about oblivious customers at a fabric store.

This employee filled the store entrance with boxes and signs, only to answer the same location question roughly 20 times.

Every answer directed customers toward merchandise they had walked past while approaching the person actively unpacking it.

The cold snap froze more than pipes because everyone’s observational skills disappeared too.

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Author

Chris Allen