When package designers go to the store, they sometimes go under false pretenses: not as true consumers, but merely pretending to be. Maybe it’s for a bit of “competitive shopping” (to check what products are occupying the shelves that a client’s new product will need to compete with). Or maybe it’s to checkout the display fixtures for a product proposal to a particular store chain.

Whenever I must do this, I get a little anxious, because managers and store security, trained to be suspicious of atypical consumer behavior, often seem to detect it in me.

Once I was in a local beauty supply store, doing research for a client who already had quite a few products on their shelves. Apparently, something about me aroused suspicion. Most of the other customers there were woman, and I was a man. Granted, they were not taking notes on a little notepad while they shopped as I was—but, whatever the reason, I somehow attracted some unwanted attention. When the proprietor challenged me, I tried to put her mind at ease, but she would have none of it. I told her who my client was and explained that I worked on packaging for products that might eventually come to be sold in her store. No dice. She forbade me to write anything more down in my notepad. And even though I purchased some “Alberto VO5 Conditioning Hairdressing for Gray, White & Silver Blond Hair” — a product which I use — she still insisted that I leave the store!