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Today Azure, Mike and Myself visited the MBK mall in bankok with the intent of buying cheap ‘designer’ jeans (average price around 600 – 800 baht, or about $20 – $25). The jeans all look real, and the imitations are good. It’s hard to know for certain if they are knockoffs made at the same factories that make the real jeans (at least brands that make their clothes in thailand) or are total rip offs, but in many cases the jeans look good even if the quality isn’t all there.
Well Mike and I spent about 40 minutes at the first store we found in the MBK mall (we think the name was Built-In), and had really enjoyed the experience of trying on different jeans and taking the advice of the salesperson working with us, who had been pretty cool the whole time and fun to shop with. After a while Azure shows up and offers opinions. Mike and I have done OK, but she’s not sure about any of them. We decide to wait and come back later. A switch is flipped in our salespersons mind and she gets PISSED.
All sentences paraphrased:
her: “I spend one hour with you! You no come back later, you no more shop at built-in! I no want you come back!”
azure: we really do want to come back, we just want to look around a little bit.
her: “you no come back. I no want you come back. You are stupid!”
one of us: “we’re not sure why you’re so mad… we just want to look around. We were planning on coming back”
her: “you no longer shop at any built in here!”
So we walked off and found other clothing stores and it wasn’t a big deal. But it did feel to us like we had run into a culture clash. In thailand are you obligated to purchase something if a clerk helps you for a while? Or was this lady crazy by thailand standards. The funny part is we really were probably going to come back. especially for the jeans that Mike found (don’t worry, he actually did find better ones anyway…).
We felt somewhat drained after the whole experience and had to sugar up a little later and decompress a bit. For me it was one of the most interesting and one of very few cultural clashes we’ve had. Without talking to people who have spent a lot of time here i’m not sure if it really was a cultural clash or just an angry shop owner with sales-entitlement issues.
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