“My unfulfilled ambition is to write a great novel in three parts about my adventures,” said Wendy. “What adventures?” Aunt Millicent asked. Wendy confidently replied, “I’ve yet to have them, but they will be perfectly thrilling.”

Ms. Jones comes to your store like Wendy in the fabled Peter Pan, with a dream in her heart. She is on a quest for adventure. She has a vision in her head of what her home will be like after her perfectly thrilling experience in your store. She does believe in fairies, and they look like your staff – magical creatures who can flick a wand and make her furniture fantasies a reality.

Does your store live up to her imagination? Can you give her an adventure, or will she wake up and find it’s all been a bad dream? It’s easy to get so bogged down in policy and procedure and prices and people problems that we forget we’re actually in the business of fulfilling dreams.

The dreaming time between dusk and dawn should be magical. Do you make it feel like a walk off the plank? How do you separate your reality (this is WORK to you, after all) from her fantasy?