A Sexy Customer Puts Home Depot to the Test

Recently, a Los Angeles-based TikToker had a simple question: Would she get better customer service at a hardware store while wearing a sexy dress or shlumpy shorts?

Content creator Caroline Ricke (better known as RichCaroline) put Home Depot to the test. Her assistant videoed her encounters with the store’s sales associates in two separate trips.

“My prediction is they’re going to be way more willing to help when I’m dressed really hot,” Ricke tells the camera.

First she went as an "off-duty model" in a short, black spaghetti-strap dress. She walks up to a male sales associate and asks, “Do you sell Tasers here?”

Can we pause for a moment? I know you’re dying to know whether the sexy dress affected how she was treated. But, first, I’ve never, ever heard of somebody going into a hardware store to buy a Taser. Is this just an L.A. thing? (Fun fact: I lived in New York for 30 years, and the only time I was ever mugged was in L.A.)

Anyway, the sales associate tells Ricke, “If we have them, they’ll be in aisle 30 or 31,” words delivered in the same, flat monotone as the side effects in a pharmaceutical ad.

Walking away, Ricke tells the camera, “He couldn’t even maintain eye contact. That means he’s really nervous.”

In the lumber department, she struggles to pull a board off the rack. “I thought people would flock to help me,” she says. “This is so heavy.” But eventually, she emancipates the board from the rack so she can ask an associate to cut it into thirds.

Walking away with three pieces of wood, Ricke says to the camera, “He didn’t even say a word to me.”

Getting an associate to assist her was a common theme of the visit: “Men are just ignoring me,” sexy Ricke says. “I put on this whole outfit and no one’s offering me any help.”

Summing up her experience: “My slutty outfit was met with more apprehension than flirtation,” Ricke says.

Later, she ditched the dress and she donned a pair of glasses. Then she went back to Home Depot wearing baggy athletic shorts and a sweatshirt.

In her shlumpy outfit, she asked a woman sales associate to show her to the paint department. After some small talk, the associate says, “You look like my daughter. You’re so pretty.”

In the paint department, Ricke holds up her phone to a different sales associate, also a woman, and says, “I’m trying to find a shade of pink that looks like this lipstick.” She gets great feedback and a high five from the associate, apparently for her color choice.

Walking away, Ricke says to the camera, “OK, I didn’t expect everyone to be so helpful. But I literally got the paint chip in the color I requested.”

Later, Ricke asks a male associate to cut a key for her. But he isn’t able to make a duplicate because the top of the key was made of bulky black plastic. (To me, it looked like a car key from a dealership.) But to make up for her disappointment, the associate gives her a coupon for five free key copies.

Summing up her experience: “I think they’re treating me better because they’re not intimidated by me,” Ricke says.

It was an interesting experiment, and Ricke’s findings ran counter to limited research that shows that customers perceived as attractive tend to have more advantages that those considered unattractive.

One study found that well-dressed women got better service at clothing stores. Another quantified how salespeople allocated more time to attractive people. And a third study found that the front-desk staff at hotels gave better service to attractive guests than to non-attractive guests.

There were problems with Ricke’s methodology, which I’m sure she would openly acknowledge. In her sexy outfit, her video encounters were with male sales associates. In her shlumpy outfit, she worked with two female associates. Second, she was being followed by a person who was taping the encounters, so male associates were understandably terrified to engage with her in the sexy outfit.

Finally—and perhaps I’m being sexist?—maybe the sales associates decided to help customers with genuine questions about hardware. They read the room and saw by Ricke’s slutty outfit that she was in the middle of a stunt, not in the middle of a home-improvement project. If that’s the case, Home Depot just scored some points in my book.