Bath & Body Works is the worst place on Earth
There is no worse retail experience than shopping at Bath & Body Works. No fewer than five associates stopped us to explain the purposely complex promotions. Buy three of these, get three of those free. Buy three of those, get four of these free. Buy one thing from this shelf, get 50% off something from that shelf.
One associate stopped us and asked us how we were going to use the coupon that had just been shoved in our hands, strategically presupposing that we were going to use it in the first place. She went on to explain that if we were buying gifts for someone that we could have them put in a bag with a bow at the register for free. She let us know this with passion and enthusiasm that most would’ve been deemed excessive even if what she was explaining was a legitimately good deal.
Natasha inquired about the whereabouts of some products she’d seen there before. Someone, who in hindsight was the most rational person we met in the store, explained they didn’t have those products anymore. More accurately, they did still have those products. They had just been put into different bottles and renamed. I don’t know whether it was honesty or fear of losing a sale that made the associate explain that what was on the floor was “basically the same” as what was there before.
Some lotion, something that had rose in it or something, we were told, imitated a trendy scent in Europe. If this piece of information was provided to us to give us the impression that shopping at Bath & Body Works in Schaumburg was a hip, cosmopolitan thing to do, that we had some sort of intangible connection to the culture and style of Paris, Berlin, and London, if that was the intent, it failed and had me mapping out a path to exit the store.
The final insult was when an aggressive associate shoved a gigantic bag in my hand. I have never and likely will not in my entire lifetime ever buy enough lotion, soap, and moisturizer to fill half this bag. The suggestion that Natasha and I, two two-handed individuals who at the time between us had approximately three free hands (in the fourth hand was the aforementioned coupon), needed a canvas bag for everything we were planning on purchasing was unfathomable. But, I felt so guilty about turning down this faux act of generosity that I walked around with the empty bag for five minutes before finally quietly ditching it.
Mind you, I’m not blaming the associates for these annoying sales tactics. But I wish whoever’s pulling the strings would knock it off. Of course, on our way out of the store, we were handed yet another coupon.