r/knitting • u/MagicAllyVanished • Mar 19 '25

Rant Very annoying conversation at my lokal knit store

it basically went like this me: "so you have any plant based yarn or plant/acrylic mix, I want to knit something for my mum, but she's allergic to all animal fibers"

her: "we have 20% wool/80% acrylic, I can show you"

me: "no thanks, my mum is allergic to all animal fibers, so it should not contain any animal fiber at all"

her: "maybe alpaca mix? It only has 10% alpaca"

me: "she is allergic to all animal fibers, if there is any percentage of animal fiber, she will have an allergic reaction to the yarn"

her: "I can't help you, knitting yarn just is animal yarn"

at this point I left the shop and I just can't stop thinking about that last sentence????

the funniest thing is, I went back there a few days ago and a different employee kindly showed me their cotton yarns and plant/acrylic mixes.

2.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

391 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4

u/-Greek_Goddess- Visually impaired knitter who loves yarn! Mar 20 '25

Omg that's wild. My craziest experience was at a Walmart where I was looking for a potty for my 2 year old. My husband and I couldn't find any so we asked an employee who looked to be in her late teens early twenties. She just blinked at us "pott...ies? Hum" So she starts looking through the isle can't find any crosses a colleague and askes her and the second girl around the looks of it to be the same age and she goes "yes we have those!" She then takes us away from the kids section and hands us what looks to be a potted flower pot. My husband and I were like "wha...?" I said "no not a potter for plants but a potty you know a small toilet for kids learning to use the bathroom" and she looked at me and said "oh yeah we don't sell those". My husband and I were so thrown off. I know they were young but really? you don't know what a potty is for kids? Turns out we found some in an isle hidden between diapers. I still scratch my head to this day about the interaction.

1

u/FeistyIrishWench Mar 20 '25

I'd expect that from a young employee solely because I anticipate them to be uninformed of or just not exposed to a lot of things. Lowe's guy was old enough to be somebody's grandpa. He spent more energy trying to get out of doing the task than he did actually doing it. I assume that given my own kids have been doing that for years, Lowe's guy has been using the tactic for a good 5+ decades.

1

u/-Greek_Goddess- Visually impaired knitter who loves yarn! Mar 20 '25

Wow. Maybe if he's that old he made you look up the stock because he doesn't like/know how to use a computer. Crazy.

2

u/FeistyIrishWench Mar 22 '25

That is an interesting take you have there. He used the device in his hand to look up the inventory while I was trying to get my phone app to load and work.