Are They Just Fucking With Me?

[TheWolfEmperor]

Every now and again I'll get a question and I can't tell if the customer is joking with me or if they're actually being serious.

The other day a customer asked if we had Amaryllis plants. I said no.

Customer: No you don't have them or no you don't know?

A couple of things. We were not in the garden center but the seasonal section. You know the section that's filled with gift bags, boxes, candles and waxes of a seasonal nature. You know for this big holiday where people traditionally decorate their halls with certain plants to usher in the spring... you know, the season after FUCKING WINTER!

I know it's been a warmer winter than usual but the climate hasn't changed that much. Our store still very much operates on the four seasons we know and there's no legitimate reason to expect a store to have live plants in the middle December of all times.

She was dead serious, too. And she was younger than me, so it's not like an older person with a decaying memory. She looked like she could be in college.

The only plant you can expect to find this time of year in any store is the poinsetta and except for plastic ones we don't even have those anymore.

[MoonCat]

Well...maybe not in your area? But where I live, amaryllis are a thing this time of year. You buy the sprouted bulb and it's supposed to bloom by Christmas, although it's kind of hit or miss. It's a popular gift, although you have to buy it before Christmas and water it if you expect it to bloom around Dec. 25. Usually the red ones are the most popular, but they sell white ones, too.

[TheWolfEmperor]

All I know is my store doesn't sell a lot of gardening related materials during the winter. Our garden center is devoted to Christmas decorations and winter maintenance.

[notalwaysright]

I haven't heard of amaryllis plants being a thing either, so I would also have been confused too. I just don't like when a customer says a thing like everyone knows what it is. I don't mean like apples or something. At the fabric store each year customers would go to a big sewing expo where they showcase BRAND NEW items, which aren't sold in retail stores yet, then come straight to my store and nonchalantly ask for it. They'd give me this condescending look, like I didn't know anything about crafting... Again, brand new item! Sheesh.

[Arcus]

Around here they are sold as a Christmas gift. You grow them in a pot for a couple weeks and after they have bloomed, you move them to a cool place so you can plant them in spring. They are not as popular as they once were. The used to have pallets of them in the Seasonal section. Someone as young as her may be looking for one as a gift for a grandparent.

[Slave to the Phone]

West coast here. It took me a minute to figure out that what she called an amaryllis is what my mother calls a Christmas Lily. I remember climbing on the back of our dinosaur to go buy them for our grandparents, so I tend to agree with Arcus.

I work with a lady who's son is a manager at a hardware store with a gardening section. Every January or February, she brings in 30-40 amaryllis bulbs that the hardware is tossing/giving away because they are starting to mold. If planted fast, they usually survive. I usually take a few and start them for other people.

I can't have them because I have rotten plant eating cats who could get very sick by eating them. I understand they aren't very safe for dogs as well.

[EricKei]

Addendum to that last one -- IIRC, Poinsettias are poisonous to kitties.

[Food Lady]

Customer: ".....or no you don't know?"

This is the stuff I hate. If you didn't know you would've said the words "I don't know".

[Kittish]

Amaryllis was a popular Christmas thing where I used to live, but I haven't seen them around here (used to live in central U.S., now I live much further west, in a desert).

[TheWolfEmperor]

This is the stuff I hate. If you didn't know you would've said the words "I don't know".

And that's really the main source of my roastbeast on this one. I get what everyone else is saying, I just think a direct answer like "no" with no hesitation would be a lot more convincing than, "Hmmm, I don't think so."

If I had thought for a moment we had them, I would have taken her to the place where I believed they were. But I was confident enough that we didn't have them to give a direct answer.

It's not even just this one incident. Someone will ask me where something is and I start taking them to a part of the store they didn't expect it would because usually, before asking me, they've looked everywhere else. But as I'm taking them there, they'll start questioning why I'm going to this particular part of the store.

It's like, you didn't know before hand. You had no idea where it was, which is why you asked me. And I very much doubt they go and find the item themselves then, because they have nothing better to do, find an associate to ask them where it is in the hopes that the associate will take them to the wrong place, just so they can have a laugh at their expense.

[workerbee222]

I must live in an unusual place. About the only retail establishment around here that doesn't offer amaryllis would be a gas station.

[csquared]

Lil' Bro's MIL lives in eastern Nebraska and grows amaryllis. Just posted a picture on Facebook of one with 7 flowers on a stalk.