So last Christmas/holiday period I worked at a gift store as a casual holiday assistant.
The number of times I had blokes come in and attempt to purchase a candle for their wife/so/mother/girlfriend etc for Christmas or birthday.
And they’d like walk up and say ‘I need to buy a candle’
We had at least 25 different candle scents.
Some guys knew what they were after- cause they would take a photo of the candle they already had.
Some had literally no clue.
Some say ‘you just pick a good one’ and we say ‘oh but you know what she likes, we’ll just help you decide’.
So we’d go through the entire process of
“Ok so sweet? Or sort of more not sweet or citrusy?”
Some weren’t sure what the difference was so we’d pull our sweetest possible candle tester (caramel sunset- it’s like sticking your face in a candy store) and our most neutral non sweet candle tester (ocean breeze - it’s a neutral sort of salt and lemongrass scent) and make them smell them.
The sweet one either gets ‘oh YES but maybe not that sweet’ or ‘no. no. She likes. Not that’
Once we make a decision on sweet or not, we then can start pulling candle testers.
We slowly narrow down those categories by smelling various test candles.
Some of these blokes have absolutely zero idea what they’re looking for when they come in, but generally we get some sort of ‘oh yeah, her perfume smells like that’ or ‘the candle we have smells a little like that’ or ‘oh I REALLY LIKE THAT’.
Sometimes we have to go through Every. Single. Candle. To get the one they are after.
During Christmas I did this probably 4-5 times a day on average. Sometimes multiple times for the same customer because they had to get a candle for mum and wife and sister and Aunty.
One guy came in on CHRISTMAS EVE about 20min before we closed and said ‘so I need…. Five gifts…. For my mum, for my girlfriend, my sister, my grandma and my girlfriends mum.’
It was….. a long 20 minutes.
It’s lovely to see them get? Not excited, exactly, but sort of enthused that! They! Made! A! Good! Choice! Because they do know their partners. They know the perfume, or what they already have in the house, or what scent she likes. They just weren’t sure how to get to the final option.
Once the candle has been selected, and they purchase it, we offer free gift wrapping.
The look of relief on some of their faces is. Absolutely priceless.
We have like. 40 something different wrapping papers. Sometimes I ask ‘favourite colour?’ And they just look blank, so I pick two nice but different papers so it’s both easy (they’re both pretty!) but they also don’t feel like I did all the choosing for them (then if she comments on it, he can say he picked it).
I live in a small country town, by the way. Some of these fellas are in their dusty work jeans, boots and clearly came in from a long day on the farm because it is Important that they get this gift.
Some seem very awkward about this whole process, some are self deprecating, some are really enthusiastic. Some start super awkward and then get really enthusiastic.
I sold. A LOT of fucking candles this last Christmas. A LOT.
I could smell those fuckers in my sleep.
I’m not making fun of these guys (ok I am just a little) because I appreciate that they a) know that their wife would like a candle, b) are prepared to smell 25 different candles to find the one they think she would like, rather than just picking one based on the colour of the box, and c) acknowledge that they need a hand selecting one and asked for assistance
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