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I am super excited to receive my first piece of business advice and I really hope to start a trend! So I hope to receive more! If you need any sort of business advice regarding Second Life, don't hesitate to contact me in world by sending me a notecard @ DJxPurity Resident! If it's real life however, I may not be able to help you. Also, it will be featured on my blog and completely anonymous.
Q: Hi there! I have a very strange question, but I feel like it's an important one. I am very LGBT friendly and do all I can to accommodate those families and customers in my store. The problem I have is welcoming them properly. For instance, the other day a lesbian couple came into my store and I knew that they were because they were affectionate and had the same last name. I like to address people as Mr & Mrs if they come into my store as a married couple, but I didn't want to make them feel uncomfortable, so I just addressed them by their names, and I felt awful doing that because I felt like I was excluding them from the way I normally do things. I have no idea how to fix this and maybe you can help me?
Hello back!
That's actually an amazing question. There are actually a few things I want to point out to my readers before going on how to address this. One of them being that's great that you verified that they were in fact a couple before judging first hand that they were, because surprising enough, most people automatically assume someone is a couple when there is such thing as people who share the same last name such as siblings, cousins, parents and so forth. Sometimes, it's a clan thing and not always a family name. Sometimes you can check their profiles to verify it. This isn't to be creepy, this is to simply address their needs properly and address your marketing tactics the correct way. You wouldn't sell a child an engagement ring would you? Probably not. But would you want to probably sell a guy who has been with his partner for a while? Probably! It's not creepy, it's just being smart. I have many sisters in Second Life and a lot of people have automatically assumed that I was in a relationship with them, and quite frankly it's rude for people to approach us in that way. A better way they could have verified it was asking how we knew each other, but they didn't, so just don't assume without minor investigation!
Another thing I wanted to point out is that in our society, we're still slowly easing into the LGBTQ culture. With United States just recently legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states in 2015 (Yayy!) and many others starting to finally recognize gay couples. It's been a very slow, painful process trying to gain the rights of so many loving, amazing and wonderful human beings and we still have a lot more to go, and I recognize that it will take some time before everybody is on board as far as treating people no matter if they're gay, straight, black, white, atheist, Christian, etc, as equal and as one without having to offend every single person we meet! We have have a ways to go before we establish love in this place!
The most traffic I get from LGBTQ customers and families is in DiaperBum Babies! where I accommodate families, babies and children. Hundreds of different customers come in searching for baby accessories every day including gay and lesbian families. When I'm working in my store, if a gay couple comes in, I of course verify that they are a couple before saying my "Hello Mr/Mrs", but instead addressing them as Mr/Mrs, I look at their last name and say "Welcome Doe Family! Let me know if I can help you find anything!" Just simply address them by their family name. They really like that too! And if they don't have a last name, all you have to say is "Welcome Ms Jane and Ms Joanne" or "Welcome Mr Joe and Mr John", it's really quite simple to do while still making them feel like everyone else that comes in.
Other than that, there is no right or wrong answer, some prefer to be called what they want you to call them, it really all depends and you will learn along the way, especially from regular customers, you'll pick up on it pretty quickly! Thank you so much for your question!
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