Shopping for clothes is not the same experience for a man as it is for a woman. A man goes shopping because he needs something. His purpose is settled and decided in advance. He knows what he wants and his objective is to find it and buy it; the price is a secondary consideration. All men simply walk into a shop and ask the assistant for what they want. If the shop has it in stock, the salesman promptly produces it and the business of trying it on proceeds at once. All being well, the deal can be and often is completed in less than five minutes, with hardly any chat and to everyone’s satisfaction.
For a man, slight problems may begin when the shop does not have what he wants, or does not have exactly what he wants. In that case the salesman, as the name implies, tries to sell the customer something else. He offers the nearest he can to the article required. No good salesman brings out such a substitute bluntly; he does so with skill and polish: “I know this jacket is not the style you want, sir, but would you like to try it for size? It happens to be the color you mentioned.” Few men have patience with this treatment, and the usual response is: “This is the right color and may be the right size, but I should be wasting my time and yours by trying it on.”