I can make the decision. Let me buy the thing.

There is a particular kind of condescension hidden inside the insistence that every customer needs to be guided through a purchase.

Sometimes I have already done the thinking. Sometimes I understand the tradeoffs. Sometimes I am deliberately choosing convenience over the lowest price, and the fact that you would choose differently does not make me confused.

I can make the decision. Let me buy the thing.

Competence does not mean omniscience

I do not need to know everything about a product to make a reasonable decision. I need enough relevant information, an understanding of the uncertainty and access to help if that uncertainty matters.

That is how ordinary adult decisions work. We choose under constraints. We accept tradeoffs. We sometimes get things wrong. A salesperson’s presence does not abolish any of those conditions.

When expertise is needed, I want it available independently of the transaction. The question is whether the advice helps me decide, not whether it helps the vendor make the decision come out correctly for the vendor.

The model may be compensating for itself

If a business needs a large closing operation, I want to know which parts of the product and buying process create that need. Is the value difficult to demonstrate? Is essential information inaccessible? Are customers being asked to accept terms that need considerable persuasion?

The size of the operation becomes its own argument for survival. The friction supporting it remains curiously exempt from the discussion.

A company can build an elaborate staff structure around compensating for avoidable friction. Once the structure exists, removing the friction threatens roles, targets and internal influence. The customer’s convenience then becomes an organizational change problem nobody volunteered to own.

My confidence does not require supervision

The especially irritating move is to treat refusal as proof that I need more guidance. I decline the conversation, so I must not understand its value. I know what I want, so I must be overlooking something. There is no answer that lets me be a competent adult whose preference is inconvenient to the seller.

I use guidance when I want it. I have used Gemini to think through things that eventually became purchases. That does not mean I need a vendor’s employee appointed guardian of the decision. The distinction is who gets to initiate the help and whose interests the help serves.

It is telling how quickly buyer independence becomes a threat in an industry supposedly devoted to understanding buyers. A customer who says exactly what they want should be good news. Instead, the process often needs to manufacture uncertainty before it can demonstrate its own value.

I am not paying for the privilege of having my confidence dismantled and sold back to me as reassurance.

The decision may include tradeoffs. It may cost more than somebody else would spend. It may even turn out to be wrong. It is still mine. The salesperson’s desire to participate does not create a vacancy I am obliged to fill.