I have a phrase in my vocabulary that I’m pretty sure nobody else in the world understands.  The phrase is “Just looking.”  I only use it when I walk into a store and I am immediately confronted by a salesperson.

”May I help you?” the salesperson asks.

”Naw,” I reply with a smile, “Just looking.”

Now you’d think that would send the salesperson scurrying for parts unknown. But it doesn’t.

”Are you looking for anything in particular?” the salesperson wants to know.

”Nope,” I say. “Just looking.”

If I happen to be in a clothing store, that’s usually when the salesperson asks “What size do you need?”

”Just looking,” I repeat, but by now my words are muffled by clenched teeth and my smile is gone.

”We have a fantastic sale on men’s double-knit jockey shorts today,” the salesperson offers.
 

“Just looking,” I say grimly, walking away.

The point is, if a customer says “just looking,” why don’t salespeople just leave him or her alone to look?  Nine times out of 10 when I say “just looking,” it seems to encourage a salesperson to bug me even more.
 

If you go into the wilds of northern Canada on a fishing trip, it’s nice to have a guide. But I really think the average American nowadays is perfectly capable of walking around in a store, any store, without a guide.
 

It was my Dad who taught me the phrase “Just looking.”  You see, Dad grew up during The Great Depression and he would never let himself be railroaded by salespeople into buying anything.  For that reason, and that reason alone, we didn’t own a television set
until three years after the Milton Berle Show was canceled.

No matter what salespeople told Dad about TV, he refused to believe it.  “TV,” he often said, “is nothing but a big gimmick. No way will TV ever replace the good ol’ radio.”

He felt the same way about a lot of other “new-fangled gizmos,” as he called them.

 

I’ll never forget the time we went into an appliance store to buy a refrigerator. A salesman kept pestering Dad and Dad kept saying “just looking” over and over and over again.
 

Finally, the salesman, in what obviously was a final desperate plea, threw his arms around the largest, fanciest and most expensive refrigerator in the place and declared, “Sir, this refrigerator will pay for itself in two years!”

”Good,” Dad replied. “When it does, send it over to the house.”