When I first started writing my books I was not in the position to have a research staff. Back in the day it was just me with pad and paper in hand fortified with enormous drive and conviction. I was going to get the information I needed to do my work, hell or high water. Regrettably it was often hell and even more often then that high water.
I remember once in the early 90s I was at Lord and Taylor in downtown
My technique was always the same, I would tell the salesperson that my dermatologist wanted to know the ingredients in the products I was using or wanted to use so he could determine if they were right for me. (Okay, I know that is a blatant lie and I’m not proud of it, but the truth rarely, if ever worked. This was the only way to accomplish what I needed to write my books.) This lie almost always gave me some amount of access for a period of time which could last with out incident anywhere from 15 minutes to occasionally even an hour. I would stand off to one side trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, then, as best I could, I began writing down ingredient listings as fast as my hand could fly across my notepad. The goal was to get as much done as I could before anyone took notice of me because once they did at some random moment the inevitable was sure to happen.
In this instance, the inevitable happened after about 30 minutes. One of the women from the other counters observed what I was doing and that was the end of my work. Usually the salesperson just asks me to leave but in this case she had actually called the store manager down and he arrived with a security guard in tow. Can you believe that! The store manager and the security guard, you would think I was shoplifting or worse wielding a weapon of some kind, my only weapon was my pad of paper which the security guard took from me. Now that was a first.
He told me I was to leave immediately and they would escort me out. As innocently as I could (though my anger and frustration I’m sure came through) I asked what the problem was given I was only writing down information that was legally there for the consumer and that I was almost done and I was going to go shopping in other parts of the store (by the way, that part wasn’t a lie). But nooooo, the manager insisted the information on the label was proprietary (yah, right, proprietary my ass) and that what I was doing could get me arrested but because I was there with my mother he wasn’t going to call the police. It probably didn’t help that my mother was yelling at him with full voice exclaiming that he should leave her daughter alone, by then he wanted us out of there as soon as possible.
The reason no one else writes the kind of books I do is because no one would put up with the insults and threats I’ve dealt with over the years to do their research. From cosmetics salespeople to angry cosmetic companies, I piss off a lot of people. Thankfully, I rarely make my readers mad, 7 editions of my book later there are enough people who don’t want to go to the cosmetic counter without me that I will continue doing what I do, and putting up with insanity at the counters. Although nowadays, thankfully, I have a team of researchers who for the past four editions of my book have saved me from the wrath, fury, and peril that I had to put up with at the cosmetic counters in the past.
