Personally, my favorite encounter was when an amazingly rude man (believe it or not, an employee where I was shopping) was trying to tell me that the plants I was getting were gonna die, and I should only get one, and on and on, completely unsolicited.
(I appreciate that general direction of advice for a novice, but he was being very rude and judgemental. I've got around 200 indoor plants, so the three I was getting didn't make a difference at all.)
My breaking point was, after about 20 minutes of belittling me about my choices, when he pointed at my selection and called my "monstera" BASIC.
I turned to him and said "sir, that is very much a rhaphidophora tetrasperma, not a monstera of any kind. Possibly basic, but deserves a proper ID. Are there any others here that you'd like to have a better understanding of?"
He scoffed and walked away and I got to finish my shopping unbothered ♥️
Get outta here with that energy, I'm buying PLANTS!
by lanalovesallama
20 Comments
Good for you. People like that need to keep their nose where it belongs. Up their own asses.
I mostly feel like Ron in the big box stores lol
Walmart I feel is the worst in this instance.
lol I don’t. I’m always happy to converse with people about stuff I’m knowledgeable about, regardless of their knowledge level. You’d be surprised what you can learn even from novices
I used to manage the garden section of the hardware store I worked at. I would get customers like this from time to time. I just had to silently roll my eyes and let them do their thing. Had someone pull the “I have a botany degree” on me before overhearing them give the worst plant care advice ever to someone.
I feel like Ron Swanson at the Plant Store, Hardware Store, AND Car Parts Store.
For me it’s Michaels or any other craft store.
I do when I buy weed seeds. Lol!
To be fair, 9 times out of 10, my customers know absolutely nothing.
To be fair, I feel like this everywhere 😂
My local nursery is full of master gardeners. I’ll stay there and chat all day
Sometimes haha
Don’t you dare point me to a Croton.
I’ve been to home improvement stores thousands of times and literally nobody has asked me what I’m working on.
Me at the weed store, lol.
I go to a local place and they are knowledgeable plant people. Number 1 reason I continue to go there. I also know nothing so there’s that.
I remember I got hired by Lowes once and they seemed like they were specifically interested in my 4+ years of experience working directly with landscape irrigation systems. However, my job ended up being watering all the plants in the morning where I never spoke to a single customer about irrigation systems ¯_(ツ)_/¯
My husband bought me a nepenthes for my birthday last year at a local nursery (not big box). It was simply labeled “pitcher plant,” but I called the store anyway to see if they knew what kind of nepenthes it was (I was pretty sure, but I was hoping for official confirmation). I told the woman who answered the phone (who seemed to be in charge) that I had questions about the nepenthes that had been sold as a gift the day before, and she said,
“oh, you mean the syngonium?”
😞…”no, the pitcher plant.”
“I don’t know anything about those. I just sell them.”
Compared to my family I am a genius but compared to real plant people im a caveman throwing seeds at dirt
Your story has two excellent examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect. I love it!