lookin' crazy for hankies

I just want to share this funny retail experience I had this Monday. So I work in research, right? I had to buy tokens for our respondents and the budget given by the client was only 50 bucks per token. So where do I look for decent token ideas? In SM! Haha! I was looking around the department store, and I was getting a bit worried and discouraged because I didn't see anything nice that cost 50 pesos, until I was at the handkerchief/bandana/shawl section. I was amazed at how pretty the hankies were, and I thought to myself that SM's really improving the designs of almost all its items. I thought the hankies cost around 60 bucks so imagine my shock when I saw that a set of 2 cost 29.75 pesos. YES--29.75. Of course I had to get them already! So I asked one of the sales ladies if they still had remaining stocks of the hanky sets. She asked how many I needed, and I think her eyes almost popped out when I told her I needed 430 sets. Hahahahaha! So she scrambled off to the stockroom to check, while a couple more sales ladies assisted me. They showed me other designs and let me choose which ones I liked so that if ever the designs I chose earlier didn't have available stock, they could get more of the new ones I chose. When the first sales lady came back, she said that there were only a few pieces left of the set that I chose (2 hankies per set). So imagine how crazy we looked when we just got almost all of the pieces that were hanging on the display rack. Of course I didn't get all the sets since there were designs I didn't personally like. I got a total of 78 2pc/set hankies. I still needed 352. I was about to panic when another sales lady showed me another set from the adjacent rack--3 hankies/set for just 39.75. GREAT! So I asked her to get me all the stock that she could get. So while waiting for the new stock I asked for, I had 3 other sales ladies helping me pick out designs I liked from that set. They got 2 pushcarts--one with the 78 sets I already had and the other cart for the new ones. And of course for the purpose of not losing count, they had to separate the new ones from the first 78. Anyway, I looked like a crazy person. People who were walking by looked really dumbfounded as to why this woman was buying so many hankies. Literally A LOT. Hahahaha! To cut the long story short, they had to bring down two boxes full of hanky sets. I didn't choose a lot of pieces since I didn't like the designs (heehee picky picky). Hey, I was thinking about our respondents. I put myself in their shoes. If I was going to be interviewed for an hour, I would want to receive a decent-looking token. Well, our respondents don't know they'd be receiving tokens but when they do receive the gifts I think they would want it to be something pretty or usable. I actually bought 3 sets for myself. Haha!

I spent 2 hours in SM just because of hankies. Of course I had to have all the sets gift-wrapped. I think in the gift-wrapping section, they already had 3 people working on the hankies. Heehee I actually told them they only had 3 hours to wrap everything since I was leaving for Cebu the next day and our interviewers in Manila needed the tokens already for the Manila/Luzon interviews. I have to give it to them, they delivered! I mean, they were able to finish everything in just a little over 3 hours. Amazing!

Segue: I joined a giveaway contest (thanks, Nina!)