Picky customers.

Companies spend millions, at the very least, to package their products attractively. And who can blame them? The average shopper is beset on all sides with options, all seeking to fill their shopping list. Within these walls, filling a person's niche takes on an even greater urgency and frightening possibilities. The average person new to the world of buying a sexual toy often has to take a moment to gain their bearing when confronted by the massed ranks of ever-erect phalli.

Science has distilled the process down with ruthless efficiency; stacking the deck to a such a degree it is like a sexually-aroused deer being sighted on with a scoped, laser-sighted, satellite-guided, dildo-sniper-rifle. Multiply that by a thousand and they're a metaphoric greasy, red mist on the commercial flooring.

From where I sit, this is a very very good thing. Anything that makes my job easier to move merchandise out the door and pipe cash in is my new best friend.

However, there is a dark, festering underbelly.

These mechanisms make the toys catch people's attention! They want to pick up the boxes. They want to examine the "clam-shells." They want to spend some time checking out what that particular product is all about. They want to see what makes that one special over all the others.

In other words, they can't keep their grubby, filthy mitts off the toys.

When they snatch up something, eyes wide with joy, and hasten to the counter to make that novelty their very own, I am only too happy to ring them up. The system has worked flawlessly.

No, what I speak of are those who browse. The customers who move down the aisles scooping up and setting back everything that has caught their attention. These people who inexplicably will take the care to put everything back on the same peg or shelf they selected it from, except for one or two which will be deposited in the most esoteric nook imaginable. I can understand not finding the original location, but must you place it in a potted tree or heating vent?

Or there are those who must attempt to squeeze, poke, prod, or otherwise palpate the item through the packaging. Blister-packs are cardboard with a film of plastic holding the toy in place. I hate them. Eventually, some moron will see them on the wall and feel obliged to gouge their finger into the film. At the least, the package now sports a stretched out divot. At the worst, they've torn the shit out of it and they have a new toy. I have boxes on the floor with nice little glassine windows allowing one to see the product. It's really classy until someone finds the urge to stuff their unwashed fingers through the window irresistible. Once that happens, it's as classy as a broken neon sign in a store front.

Some toys attempt to mimic human flesh. In a naive gesture to let potential consumers get an idea of what it is like, they will often include a disc or block of the substance positioned under a cut-away and invite the customer to take a feel. Oh goodie. Invite them to molest the merchandise. A week later, even with hawk-eyed vigilance, the samples will have been sucked from the packaging like an eyeball from a skull leaving a vulnerable void like an empty socket. Why?! They don't provide a huge sample; you can't do anything with it. Do so many people crave transporting a gobbet of cadaver-tissue in their pocket?

Toys that are not sealed will be violated. Many is the time I have confronted a shopper peeling tape away and/or ripping the paper to see/touch some novelty. I have yet, in my entire career in an adult store, to have even one of those individuals claim understanding of why I had to address them. They may reduce a box to a crumpled shred, but they will argue about why it was justified and why they should not have to pay for it.

Everyone wants a pristine item. Especially with something you are going to be introducing in very intimate ways to your person, it may be understandable that you want to make sure it has known no hands but your own.

Exhibit some bloody restraint. And the next time you pick up a package that looks a bit worn and battered and ask the guy behind the counter why it looks so ill used, set it down gently and take a look in a damned mirror.