FI and I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond last night excited for the experience of registering... and it was absolutely miserable.
They walked us back to the registry area to get set up, which was fine. That whole process, no big deal. Then the associate starts in on fine china and we'll "shop by section"... we informed her MULTIPLE times that we have a small list ( />20 things) that we want to upgrade or that we need, but we are not looking to register for anything pricey. We'll never use fine china... ever... so we see no need to register for it.
She insisted on "the rule of threes" - that we need to register for "at least 3 items per guest, plus more for any showers". We're inviting over 250 people, which means she expected us to register for over 700 items. Umm, no. She also insisted that we couldn't possibly get through the entire store in one trip; that we need at least THREE appointments to register for "everything we need". Again, no.
She walked us through the store, section by section, pulling out her recommendations. If FI or I stopped to look at something, she would sort of shoo us along to her next set of recommendations. I wanted a small hand-mixer... she insisted that I register for a $350+ KitchenAid mixer that I likely will never use, nor do I have room for.
FI and I finally had enough of trying to tell her "no" that we registered for what she picked out and then left the store. We got home and deleted more than half of what we registered for in-store and added a few items from online.
Is this normal protocol for BB&B (or registries in general)? We were looking forward to scanning things and giggling about what we were registering for (he found a "perfect over-easy egg" maker for like $7 that the BB&B lady promptly shooed him away from, so he didn't get to register for it) and just having fun. It was exhausting and miserable to follow this woman around explaining that we don't need a $250 comforter when our cat and dogs sleep on the bed with us every night, and our current $30 comforter is on the floor.
Are we crazy to look for that experience? Or was this just an odd associate/store that we happened to get?