We were in the Delancey Street area of lower Manhattan, the Lower East Side, this one fine day looking for bed linen. We were going from one to the other to the next of all kinds of what I think of as hole-in-the-wall fabric stores. These were places where you could really find some nice stuff if you put forth the necessary effort and my wife and my mother-in-law were really good at that.
While my father-in-law and I were waiting around as events transpired, we heard this one store clerk talking to another and laughing so hard, he could hardly get his words out.
He had just finished making a big sale of linens to a couple who had just left. That couple had been in the store the previous week when they had been waited on by that same clerk whom they recognized when they'd come in again. They asked their clerk about purchasing some additional items in the same fabric pattern they had chosen before, a pattern which they really liked. They said it was called "Henderson".
The clerk was puzzled because he didn't know of any fabric pattern by that name when suddenly he recognized the pair and it hit him. He had made up that name when he had waited on them the week before. He also remembered what they had bought so, suddenly, it was "Henderson? Oh yes, I'm quite sure we have more stock of that pattern right over here........." and off he went.
Well, he had once again made his customers happy. Of course, the next time they would come in, who knows?
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