A Rainy Day Customer.

There she is. Customer A:

Bright orange rain pants and a 3 inch thick yellow woolen sweater perhaps better seen on a lobster boat. Oh and less I forget the rain soaked green, Boston Redsocks baseball hat placed slightly to the side.

Bright colors this early in the morning will usually force me to add 400mg of Ibuprofen with my coffee and politely wait behind our sale rack of Vin De Pays placed perfectly at the center of the store. This isn't a hiding place, rather a place to prepare and plan my next move.

So there she is.. She grabs a basket and begins blundering down the isle whistling some Frank Sinatra song that I probably haven't heard since my brother-in-laws wedding several years back.

She is probably one of these overtly happy, morning people that will eat a full breakfast and do the entire crossword section of the paper before 6:00am.

Finally the contact appears inevitable.

I correctly place my smile and assert HI, How are you today? Can I help you find anything? She then

smiles back and and simply ask with a soft voice where my California Cabernets are? Being the ever pleasing host I quickly present to her our rather large selection of Cabernets. She then smiles again and begins to tell me why she loves Cabernets and how she used to live in Alaska and good wines were very hard to find. She continued to tell me that the small Alaskan town she lived in only had one place to purchase alcohol. The selections were limited to cheap Australian wines and

lots of beer. For this she would make the 60 mile drive to Anchorage once a month or so for

purchasing better wines. This is when the conversation sort of grabbed me. I thought to myself

here I am surrounded by readily available great wines and all the comforts of home yet this lady would drive roughly 60 miles a month in ALASAKA just to find a store to purchase "decent" wines. . She didn't care about the cold rain. She didn't care how she looked. She just wanted to get to a place to buy the wines she wanted.

Now normally this would have been just another good conversation and everyone leaves happy. Then as shes going out the door she slightly mentions her trip back to Storrs Connecticut! Storrs is a very little town about 40(+) miles North.Hmmmm..I thought. I promptly gave her a

20% discount for the case of wine and an additional coupon to use on her next visit. She smiled and said she would see me next Month.I smiled and said to myself "There goes the perfect customer".