Today Scott is jumping in as guest writer on this blog. Because he does a great job of telling stories and he has the clearest recollection of the following story. And it will serve double-duty as he includes it in an assignment for his negotiations class.
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After our nice dinner at Mon Ami Gabi... we started back to our car. Since there is a mini-mall in every casino, we were walking by several stores one of which was a big perfume cologne store. To back up a bit, with me in Las Vegas all week every week, and in school every other weekend, Shannon had a pretty fail birthday. I had been able to ship to her one actual physical birthday present, and the rest of the boxes were filled with "I.O.U's" for things that were either still en route, or that we would go out and do/buy later. One of these I.O.U's was for a new bottle of perfume so this was the perfect opportunity for me to pay up.
Being a perfume store, there were about 300 to choose from. The store was attended by a twenty something metro-sexual who could have been from Spain or another similar country with enough of an accent to be cool. He approached us as we started smelling and took Shannon's hand and said. "My apologies for bothering you, but you are such a beautiful woman,when you are done I have to ask you something, and I want to show you something, and when I do, even though I am bothering you you are going to want to give me a hug." We continued smelling and every once in a while he would return to have us smell something else, he would again compliment Shannon, and move on.
Apparently he finally could hold it in no longer...he came over again and the conversation went something like this:
Sales-dude: I apologize for bothering you, but I have to ask you this question right now....you are such a beautiful woman, what makeup do you wear.
Shannon, who was at this point pretty embarrassed timidly answers "Maybelline"
Sales-dude, reaches out and lightly takes Shannon's hand, slaps her hand and says...."Shame on you...Maybelline...Shame on you" Come with me.
He pulls her across the room and sits her in a chair and spends the next 15 minutes lecturing her on the damage that she is doing to her skin with her ghetto makeup and at the same time gets her to allow him to do her half of her face with new makeup. Also during this time he tells her about the different famous people for whom he has done make-up. Celine Dion and someone who I can't remember and tells her how they all use this same make-up now.
As you can imagine, at this point I am pretty thoroughly entertained, it feels kind of like the "Bellissima" sketches on Saturday Night Live, with this guy occasionally tossing back-fisted compliments to me because of how gorgeous Shannon is, and how in the world did I end up with her? And then returning to the task at hand which was pretty aggressively working over the left side of her face.
Well, the short story is the makeup was pretty amazing, he had Shannon do the right side of her face by herself so she could see how easy it was.
With the makeup done, he now shifts into "salesman mode" and of course there are no price tags on anything...he tells us the retail price for the makeup, and then tells us the deal he is going to give us. Of course I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what makeup should cost so I try to get some input from Shannon on exactly how much this guy is going to steal from us. It turns out that he only took us for about $10 more than what we could have bought it for online...which means that this guy was a great performer... but thankfully not a pirate... seeing Shannon as happy as she clearly was meant that my checkbook was out and this guy had all the power to fill in the amount....and apparently, while my back was turned, he also got his hug....grrrrrr...
Shannon also found perfume that was perfectly named "Be Delicious" and after seeing the Jersey Boys last night, I think she will have to agree that her birthday wasn't really "fail" at all.
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No fail. This birthday was absolutely a winner! Thanks for writing this up . . . you know that bits and pieces were a blur to me.
