Dear Brooks Brothers: Please Read "Blink"

I just read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, and despite hating The Tipping Point, I thought it was pretty good. There's one section about a wildly successful car salesman whose secret is little more than trying not to pre-judge customers:

"Prejudging is the kiss of death," he says. "You have to give everyone your best shot. A green salesperson looks at a customer and says, 'This person looks like he can't afford a car,' which is the worst thing you can do, because sometimes the most unlikely person is flush."

Indeed, I went to Brooks Brothers a couple of weeks ago ready to buy a jacket. I didn't care how much it cost - $700, $1,000, $3,000, whatever. I just wanted a jacket that I really liked. So I walked in and it was like I was invisible. I passed two associates who completely ignored me. Then an old white guy came in behind me and they practically volunteered to hold his dick at the urinal. I was wearing jeans, a suit jacket, and oxford shoes; I wasn't dressed poorly compared to anyone else. There were a couple of coats I liked, but I didn't see my size, and fuck if I'm going to beg someone to take my money. Good job, assholes. Now Nordstrom has my Christmas bonus.

Brooks Brothers is the worst, but the other consistently bad retailer is the watch store Torneau. I've been ready to buy shit there and I've left after nobody asked me if I needed help.

On the other hand, at Best Buy, they bug me too much. Maybe it's an Asian thing.

OKCupid Update:
17/50

Rejection Therapy: OKCupid

All right, so I hate rejection. Hate it. I guess nobody really likes it, but few take it as hard as I do.

I ran across this Bloomberg story the other day about a guy who goes around filming himself asking outrageous requests of people in the hopes of accumulating 100 total rejections and thereby desensitizing himself to it. What a great idea! I used to be terrified of public speaking, but after an...immersion therapy of sorts, it doesn't bother me anymore. In fact, I sort of enjoy it.

So, in the interest of self-improvement for the new year, I've decided to do something similar. I don't have time to film myself in public (plus the guy is Asian so I'd just be a copycat anyway), so I needed to find a way to a) quickly expose myself to a wide array of people, and b) make the stakes genuinely high (i.e., no applying to 100 nuclear physicist jobs because I know they'd never hire me and I have no emotional skin in the game). Then it hit me: OKCupid - it's perfect. It's free, it's fast, and as long as I make a genuine effort to write sincere messages to women I think I'd truly like, all rejections are core repudiations of my personality and/or physical appearance, for maximum burn. Nice!

Operational guidelines:
I. A "rejection" will be counted if:
a) Three days have passed after an initial message with no response
b) At any point in correspondence, gal in question bails, never to be seen again
c) A response is received but is negative in tone or content*
d) I get to count the ten I've already amassed

*Judges' rulings are final.

Edit: I can't even find 100 women I want to contact, so I'm paring this down to 50. Even that's going to be a challenge, once you take out the angry chicks, cat lovers, and Jews (I actually love Jewish women. Love 'em. But when have you ever seen a Jewish girl and an Asian guy? Never, that's when), there are like three people left.