How Am I? Potato!

These last few days, something's been itching away at my curiosity at work. Anybody who has ever gone into a store knows that employees normally start with a friendly greeting and ask how one is doing as a way to just start a conversation. Now, the part that has gotten me to scratch my head is when the customer replies "fine, how are you?" and then turn around and ditch you!

You just can't win there!

Either you care about my day or not, but don't fool me into thinking you might start a conversation! If you don't want to talk to me, just say "I'm fine" and go about your business. But asking me how I'm doing, only to walk away is just plain annoying and rather rude.

But I also thought I would have a little fun with this. So today at work, I devised a little plan. Whenever I greet a customer and was asked how I was doing, I would simply answer their question with a single word.

That's right, I would just reply potato.

I had a list of things I could have said to a customer to check if they were listening:
-Banana
-I would have mumbled random stuff (worked too)
-Speak Spanish
-Bacon
-Honkey Tonk!

And from that whole list, potato seemed like the right fit. So then, I waited until the first customer came in so I could try it. Hours later, I had already counted nearly 17 potato replies to customers. And from all those, only one took the cake as the best one of the day.

Me: How are you doing today?
Customer: Fine, how are you?
Me: Potato
Customer: That's good.

I was so baffled, that I decreed the experiment a success. Barely any customers will listen to what the salesman will say, no matter what. I guess that's just part of retail.