A Scent-sational Phallic Faux Pas
Two friends and I were taking market surveys over twenty years ago, back when they did them in person and you got cash in hand.
We were doing surveys on a perfume bottle shape, and the surveyor asked the next question on the list:
Surveyor: “Would you call this bottle a phallic shape?”
[Friend #1] and I started howling. Then, we had to explain to the innocent [Friend #2] what that meant.
Did I mention that my friends and I were all female and [Surveyor] was male?
I felt bad for [Surveyor]. I knew him fairly well — we’d chat when things were slow at our respective jobs in the mall — and he was a genuinely nice guy.
Incidentally, I did see that brand of perfume for sale eventually. The bottle was the same color but a different shape.