When Giving a Gift Certificate Is Lethal

Posted by Jill Chivers in Shopping, Clothes and Emotions

Someone seriously asked me recently if we offered gift certificates for the Shop Your Wardrobe program. I should mention that this was a man, the husband of a woman who apparently (according to him and whatever criterion he was using, fair or otherwise) is a shopaholic.

I pondered this question for approximately 2.3 seconds (much of that time I’m sure was spent by my brain trying to reconnect the wiring between my ears and my brain, to confirm that I had indeed heard this question correctly and he wasn’t asking about, oh, I don’t know… whether we offered gift sprockets for Shop Your Wardrobe).

I responded in the negative to this question. No, we do not offer gift certificates. And no, I can’t imagine a time when we ever would.

Why? Yes, this question was indeed the follow-up to my response, and I will respond to it here in case some other guileless individual seeks a sincere response to this question.

Because. Because so many reasons that my fingers are actually trembling as I contemplate the commitment to keyboard of what these reasons are. So let’s have a stab at this. In the vein of Steve Martin’s pub performance in the movie Roxanne, I’ll give you the editorial category into which my responses are being grouped as I go:

(Empowering) Because a woman needs to choose for herself if she wants to undertake a challenge of this nature
(Success) Because a woman’s chance of succeeding at a challenge like this is increased a hundred fold if she enrols herself onto the program
(Safety) Because giving a woman a gift certificate of this kind is likely to result in expressions of physical violence from the givee toward the giver
(Technical) Because if a woman signs up for a program like this on her own, she has the technical capability required (very basic) to access the program materials
(Philosophical) Because no-one can truly know the needs and preferences of another
(Psychological) Because the mind of another can only truly be understood from within. Self-awareness is truly an ‘inside job’
(Paranoid) Because who knows who’s really out there
(Obvious) Because it’s incredibly presumptive and likely offensive to give someone a gift certificate for a program like this
(Comparitive) Because giving a gift certificate for a program like this is the equivalent of giving one for, say, Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig
(Concerned) Because the giver of such a gift certificate is likely to be frozen out of the relationship, like one of those northerly winds that blow in from Lake Huron
(Commercial) Because it’s not good business to be the on the delivery end of an unwanted gift
(Contemporary) Because this isn’t an episode of Intervention

Ok so I didn’t make it to 20, like the talented Mr Martin did in Roxanne. But we made a pretty good start at the reasons why we won’t be offering gift certificates for Shop Your Wardrobe anytime soon.