Spray Testing.

There is new meat in the Hall of Plenty.
The bright eager faces of the spray tester girls on the promotional stand, bring new life to the Spring Season, filling the hall with fragranced enthusiasm. Bless them, like lambs to the slaughter.
The shine had definitely worn off by tea time, in fact one of them had had a minor melt down and rushed off the shop floor in tears.
You have to be tough in this business and spray testing is the toughest gig of all. On display by a door in the freezing cold, or at the heart of a shop floor in front of expensive shiny surfaces, you can't be too pushy or too shy. It's a fine balance between offering someone a spray of fragrance to try and badgering the living daylights out of them.

Watching the 'New Meat' the girls and I were reminded of just how hard it is. You step forward, smile in place, bottle at the ready, opening statement on the tip of your tongue and you get the brush off. It could be the open handed, 'No!' Or the , 'I can't hear you' shuffle. That is when the customer hastily tries to get past slower shoppers without acknowledging you, forcing them to perform an erratic forward, stop, side step. Which is, more often than not, followed by shoving past some elderly woman in a fleecy.

It's not easy , so please spare them a smile even if you say 'No thanks.'