You know I’m a self-loathing sample whore.
I wrote a whole post about it here.
I become extra self-loathing when my sample whoring backfires on me. Like at the farmer’s market, when the jam turns out to be garlic chutney. Or when I pop a piece of cut-up nectarine in my mouth, and either it’s rotten or, just as I swallow it, a man dressed in garbage bags and reeking of urine (and the other thing) comes over, says, “Just one more,” ignores the toothpicks, and sticks his dirt-crusted fingers into the pile. Sorry, not into the pile. BACK into the pile.
What did I expect, right?
It’s a plate of free food in the middle of a park square.
But yesterday I really got burned.
My expectations were unfairly worked up and used against me.
I’m walking on Bleecker, the part where it transitions from obnoxious high-end retail that replaced cute antique shops to obnoxious low-end douchewear shops that replaced the world’s last record stores. And there, outside a new storefront with macarons stacked in the window, is a multi-tier cupcake stand, and a man handing something out.
I think, “now that looks like a sample stop.”
…And then think, “I don’t need any cupcake to undo the hourlong walk I just took,” and keep walking, and then think, “What’s an hourlong walk for if not to earn a cupcake,” and double back, and then think, “They looked like the old-school bakery kind with bad frosting that’s just sweetened lard,” and reverse directions, and then think “Fuck it” and triple back (that’s a real thing you do when you overthink things) and approach the cupcake stand.
I see as I get close that they’re DEFINITELY going to be bad cupcakes, but free cupcake is free cupcake. The guy with the giveaway bags says, “Would you like one?”
“Why yes I would,” I trill, in a voice that my body reserves for when it wants me to sound like a ridiculous lady.
He picks a cupcake for me — not the one I had my eye on, but free cupcake is free cupcake — and, just before putting it in the appealingly striped free cupcake bag, says, “They’re soap.”
WHAT.
He looks very pleased with himself. “Yes, got you, right? Smell it.”
OK, now, I’ve already been tricked by the mirage of cupcakes that turns out, in closeup, to be shitty cupcakes. But that the shitty cupcakes are soap is a layer of deception I can’t handle.
Is this supposed to be a cute gift?
“Oh look, kids, they brought cupcakes! Oh, they’re soap? Even better! Because who wants something you can eat when, instead, you can have a toxically perfumed object that makes your whole house smell like Hello Kitty if she were an 80-year-old prostitute, and that you have to display whenever the person who gave it to you comes over, or pretend you used it and loved it.”
So I go from “Shame on me for walking back out of my way to eat sugar-lard just because it’s free” to “Shame on you for making this awful product that will make children cry.”
“Oh,” I say to the guy. “No thanks.”
“But they’re for your bubble bath. You drop the cupcake into the bath and it makes bubbles.”
So do farts.
“Yeah, thank you,” I tell him. “I don’t take baths.”
“But it’s also hand cream. You use hand cream, right?”
“I don’t,” I tell him, thinking, HOW IS THIS SHITTY CUPCAKE BOTH BUBBLE BATH AND HAND CREAM? What else is it, a t-shirt? A reversible sleeping bag? Now I know I’m dealing with a psycho.
So I don’t feel bad when I walk away.
And then double back to take a picture.
Now you.
Are you a sample whore? Have you ever been burned by your sample-whoredom?
What do you think of cupcake-looking bath products that stink?
TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS.
Oh, and if you liked this, SHARE AND LIKE IT!
Oooo….I’ve done that with gifts and samples. I think they smell horrible, but they’re important because they were free, right? Then they linger, under my bathroom sink, for a year…maybe two. Long enough for me to wrestle with the guilt of disposing of them.
God, I love your writing. That was hilarious.
This sort of fits the bill but either way I cant get it out of my mind! I love a perfume sample and years ago when I was working in London I was in a well known pharmacy and as I walked in the women caught my eye and before I could blink she had squirted me with perfume on my arm. It was back in the day when they did not use the little paper tabs! Firstly it was a perfume called Poison which to me it was, to say I disliked the smell intensely was an understatement add to that the fact that I had sensitive skin and it immediately went bright red and started to itch! It was so bad I went to the bathrooms and washed my arm but I just could not get rid of the smell, I drove home with my arm out of the car window. Now when I see someone with a perfume bottle in a store I run the other way!
Perfume sample assault is the worst!
Brilliant. I used to call myself a FREEGAN… but sample whore works, too.
P.S. – You so funny!
Ya. I’m a sample whore. I need to be persuaded so I take the free stuff to see if it makes me want it bad. If the seller is a strong hitter, I might take the bite. 😉 I like to listen to stellar pitches and people with great language skills that move you to buy. Bc we’re all emotional beings-God made us that way.
I’M SO GLAD YOU DIDN’T TAKE A BITE.
This, Laura, is absolutely frappin’ hilarious! I can picture you there and I try and put myself in your shoes and, OMG, too funny! I know one time so long ago, my husband thought he was grabbing a bunch of tiny (smaller than marbles) berries… They looked like berries, smelled like berries, tasted like potpourri!! Hysterical to me… Thank you for the laugh! And yes, sharing! xo
You crack me up with this one!
One summer we had a potluck open house party and I watched my friend’s eyes open wide as she grabbed a Dixie cup and poured herself some of the fuscia colored punch on the table (think summer, she’s hot and thirsty).
It wasn’t fruit punch laced with rum, it wasn’t a sangria . . . it was warm beet borscht!!! Someone brought one of those see through containers with a spigot at the bottom FULL of borscht. She drank and spit out an arch of the stuff . . . I wondered why the container was full on a hot day.
Omg I was dying laughing reading this! I heard you on Amy Porterfields podcast as a guest talking about telling stories to engage readers. I love how you did that here!
I don’t I can be considered a soap whore unless it is a wine sample stand at a grocery store. In this case, I grab a chair, invite the cheese sample lady to join me, and make new friends while forming an opinion about the wine quality, which can take a while.
This is the first blog post of yours I’ve read and you are HILARIOUS!
You have a new fan. ????
You are expert at painting a picture. The P, of course, in COPY, which I just learned in your seriously helpful interview with Lisa Fraley….but I digress (did I impress you?!) I was there, and now I’m here, and now it’s 1 hour later and I still am “squirreled”.
Random comments: Those cupcakes looked amazing in the photo, Hello Kitty and 80 year old prostitute: hilarious! And: WHAT. Just WHAT. So funny. So just my reaction. Your words ALWAYS resonate with me. The Y (yay/yikes!)
Thank you for making me laugh this morning, and inspiring me to revisit some of my copy!
You are expert at painting a picture. The P, of course, in COPY, which I just learned in your seriously helpful interview with Lisa Fraley….but I digress (did I impress you?!) I was there, and now I’m here, and now it’s 1 hour later and I still am “squirreled”.
Random comments: Those cupcakes looked amazing in the photo, Hello Kitty and 80 year old prostitute: hilarious! And: WHAT. Just WHAT. So funny. So just my reaction. Your words ALWAYS resonate with me. The Y (yay/yikes!)
Ok- i gotta go get some work done. Thank you for making me laugh this morning, and inspiring me to revisit some of my copy!
There’s a place near my office that does dollar hamburgers and dollar slices of pizza (specifically, 7th Avenue at 33rd street). They have a gentleman with a booming voice advertising this, often with a tray of samples.
Now I’m not sure if you can explain to someone that the prevailing smell of waste coming from the corner has so turned their appetite that the sight of your dollar burger is making you gag.
Let’s just say that there should be a soap and water scrub down every night on 7th Avenue from 34th to 30th.
I can’t.
I won’t!
xox
“But they’re for your bubble bath. You drop the cupcake into the bath and it makes bubbles.”
So do farts.
I actually spit out my coffee this morning reading this. Thanks.
So I often rely on samples to feed my kids dinner as their stomachs are still rather small. And frankly, I think it’s a genius solution to the portion control issue that is leading to obesity in this country. That said, your story would be the Midas touch of my life! I had a nightmare last night that I was in my local whole foods and every sample I touched turned into hand lotion or bubble bath. my kids were crumpled, crying and starving on the linoleum tiles of the cheese section. Thanks a fuckin’ lot, Laura! What’s next? Our iPad is really a bath towel?
There’s a new trend of making soap bars that look like marbled chocolate.
STOP THE INSANITY.
That’s even more wrong! Because when you touch it, you don’t realize, “oh, that’s not chocolate.” Whereas at least with the cupcake, you’d be like, “something’s wrong here” before cramming it in your mouth.
Or maybe that’s too optimistic.
Tears. Actual tears of laughter streaming down my face right now.
Mo, how much do I love you.
The picture had me fooled too! But bubble bath AND hand cream? Sounds gross.
Yup. No idea how that works. I think he was making shit up.
I would definitely have taken that soap/bubblebath/handcream cupcake. Then put on a hat and gone back for another one.
I think it would be fun to play with it in my big bath tub. And free. Tell me, what could be more fun?
I can think of lots of things that would be more fun – because my definition of fun doesn’t smell like these soap cupcakes. But I’ll give them your info!
Great post, I usually walk right by sample tables and now I will do so at a quicker pace…
You and I are clearly from different genetic stock, Barbara! I feel like I was born beelining to the samples. In my blood.
Hilarious, thanks for posting!
“Got you, right?” Whatever you did in response to that would DEFINITELY stand up in court as a reasonable reaction. I feel punch-y just reading that. Grrrrrr!
Blogging is my sucker punch. Except more cowardly.
My sample burn story is so horrifying, that I’m still not over it 3 years later. Thank you for providing this forum for those of us that have experienced real trauma.
So here’s how it went. There was a new sorbet vendor at the Farmer’s Market in Santa Cruz and everyone was talking about how amazing it was, it was the talk of the town, or at least the farmer’s market part of town. This was tricked out fancy sorbet like basil and shrimp (not really, just givin’ you a little shout out). I was standing in line behind a man, very similar to the crusty one you described double dipping into the fruit. But this fellow, on top of being filthy, was an aggressive talker and the sorbet sample hander outer, an equally aggressive listener, was slowly handing him tasters making sense of and encouraging the garbled conversation.
I thought to leave several times (I’m not good at waiting. When they put in traffic signals to enter the freeway at rush hour I honestly thought because I wasn’t going to work they didn’t apply to me and blissfully scooted by, the poor employed people, in the car pool lane) back to sorbet – God how my impatience would have payed off this time, but everyone said it was so good and I haaaad to try it, so I stayed put.
Crusty finally scuttled away and it was my turn. I knew exactly which flavor to try first, and the order to work down to the least desirable, but still worthy of a sample. I was ready to be blown away. The spoon was in my mouth, the sorbet just starting to melt and flavors envelop my tongue when an unbelievably disturbing realization started to broadcast across my brain. The spoon handle was sticky, not new fresh sample kind of sticky, really sticky, like standing around with a used spoon in your hand while talking to a homeless man in the heat sticky. I pulled the spoon out of my mouth and my worst fears were confirmed. Underneath the layer of light peach colored sorbet that I had requested there was a sticky old layer of raspberry red sorbet.
I had the used taster spoon of old man-crusty-talks-a-lot in my hand and moments before in my mouth.
Can’t even look at sorbet, and honestly, it’s kind of even hard to talk about.
Thanks for listening.
You have scared me proper. I will ALWAYS inspect the sample spoons before I grab one.
I would have totally bought it if it were also a reversible sleeping bag. ALMOST beats the Babysitter’s Club one I had when I was 9. (I said almost, Belgray.)
You had a FRANCINE PASCAL SLEEPING BAG?
Only thing cooler would be a Sweet Valley High pup tent. That turned into a hand cream/ bubble bath eclair, of course.
Ha! “So do farts.”
GOOD THING I wasn’t drinking a green smoothie (or a 14-word-latte drink, or any drink, for that matter) while reading this, Laura.
To have to wipe down the computer screen and the entire keyboard full of muck (spittle doesn’t count) after laughing so hard, would have been a bit too time-consuming, even for me with my addiction to procrastination.
If you’re addicted to procrastination, maybe you can come over here and wipe down the sneeze marks on MY screen. It’ll only take a minute. But I’ve been putting it off.
I make soap and more, and almost made cupcake soaps a few years ago – but then thought better of it. Glad I didn’t as I could be the brunt of your post. But then again I live on the West Coast so wouldn’t happen! It would be too hard to use them – wrong shape. Thanks for the post.
Don’t underestimate my love of samples. Or my ability to spot them. If you put out what looked like free cupcakes, I just might hop on a plane.
I think your posts are the only posts I actually don’t just skim. I read attentively in full because you always exceed my expectations. This post is so funny, offers food for thought (pun intended) and inspires with such unique, authentic writing.
And I don’t mind your use of curses…they fit.
And now I have a new term…”Sample Whore,” who knew?
Brilliant Laura!
That’s the greatest compliment, Jul’s! Thank you.
If you’re not used to cursing, I think you’ll find a lot of new terms here.
I think I still would have ate it.
xoxo
Are you one of those people always having their stomach pumped?
All I have to say is….why?
Word.
I often bring our kid to Whole Foods on the weekend for a “sample hunt” – she loves it, and it sure beats pretending I’m not afraid of the climbing structure at the park.
And my sample whoring means I take just about anything that’s free – even cupcake soap.
I almost never find samples at Whole Foods. Maybe I have to start going on weekends. Thanks for the tip!
Trust me, these aren’t free enough to be worth taking. I love free, but they’d have to pay me.
ON the other hand, if you HAVE to take a bath…(as I quadruple back)
Ha. Quintuple away, you don’t want to smell like these cupcakes.
Duly noted, Laura 🙂
What the? Who wants to rub themselves with a cupcake? I feel pretty strongly that soap shouldn’t be food and food shouldn’t be soap. That man should be forced to eat his soapcakes.
Soapcakes. Thank you for giving them a name.
I’m betting you right now, though, that someone will find this blog because they search for “rub self with a cupcake.”
As for food not being soap and vice versa, that’s why I hate ice cream made with lavender. Shit like that makes me gag.
Heck yeah, I don’t want my food to smell like lotion. Or candles. Or soap.
And vice versa.
So is that the actualy picture from the cupcakes, cause they look real.. I totally would have taken the soap.
It is! Look pretty edible, don’t they? Not worth the calories, but edible.
I once took a bath with a free fizzy soap ball and was rewarded with a not free burning hoo ha.
“But they’re for your bubble bath. You drop the cupcake into the bath and it makes bubbles.”
So do farts.
Perfection!
And so are you.
Say WHAT? You don’t take baths?
I don’t want to stew in my own filth with a cupcake.