My Dragons
Weldin's Not Well
I went down to Weldin's on Wood Street on my lunch break, to buy a bottle of ink for my fountain pen. And when I had decided what I wanted, the guy behind the counter took the bottle over to the cash register for me.
Now, Liam (being obsessed with pens) goes there a lot, and he tells me it's SOP, so I am marginally less insulted; I am part of a class of potential shoplifters rather than being individually assumed to be a risk. But I have to wonder if that policy doesn't do more harm than good. It's not like ink, mechanical pencil refills, leather-bound portfolios and packets of fancy Post-It notes are high-shrinkage items, nor will the people most likely to shoplift just for the heck of it (well-off white girls ages ~11-15) be spending a lot of time in a downtown Pittsburgh stationary shop. It makes the store as a whole feel considerably less welcoming and does a great deal to foster an impression that Weldin's and its sister knitting store already have in spades: that we the customers are priviledged to be permitted to shop there at all.
I can't say I'm never going to buy anything there again--though if it were not policy, that's exactly what I would be saying, and in a letter to the manager at that--but it certainly makes me less likely to browse just for the sake of seeing if they have anything cool. From now on I think Weldin's is going to be a destination store only, a place I go to when I need something specific that I can't easily get anywhere else.