Last week I sat outside a bar with a friend, enjoying one of the last warm evenings of the year. My friend works Saturday afternoons at a wine store, and he told me about how he helps people find the right bottle of wine. “I ask people what they like,” he said, “But it seems like they're always more articulate about what it is that they don't like.”
Right away I thought of how I once went into a perfume shop and told the sales person that whatever perfume he brought out, please make sure that it doesn't have vanilla, because I don't like vanilla. It was the early 1990s, and everywhere I went I was bombarded by Calvin Klein Obsession and detested it. In my mind at that time, Obsession equaled vanilla. Now I think back at the sales person and marvel at his ability to suggest anything given such lame guidance…
Andy Tauer of