"Smell this." It was not a request, but an order, and one that came at me from the side while I was engaged with another customer.
"Excuse me?"
"I want you to smell this and tell me if you think it's okay." She extended a small plastic tub, the kind we use for bulk cheeses. I looked without reaching for it.
"Is that the Bulgarian feta?"
"Yes."
"Then I don't have to smell it. We sell twenty pounds a week. It's fine."
"It smells strong," she sniffed, raising a used kleenex to her raw, red nose.
"It's a strong cheese," chimed in DeeDee. She gets defensive with customers sometimes. (I think if I stay there for five years I might get a tad short-tempered as well.)
"I know it is. I buy it all the time. But it smells different." She set the tub down and reached into her bag for another kleenex, blowing her nose audibly enough that heads turned in the deli. I picked it up and sniffed it, just to make her happy.
"You don't have to buy it, but I'm telling you it's fine." I was smiling (on the outside), but DeeDee was apoplectic. I stepped between her and the customer, ostensibly to reach for something, but it was really because I was afraid she was going to say something else.
The woman turned and walked away, still not satisfied, but with cheese in hand.
"It's always something with that one," Dee muttered. "Last time she was telling me that the Willoughby smelled off."
This left me wondering how in the hell one would know if Willoughby was "off". It smells like a corpse when it's at it's best. I kept quiet since Dee seemed to be on to something else.