Something Besides Perfume Is in the Air at Nordstrom

County Supervisor Roger Stanton and his wife are hungry. They’re standing in the lunch line at Nordstrom. Then, whammo. Next thing you know, Stanton and some Ali Kashiyarandi fellow are brawling.

I don’t know about you, but my feeling on this is that ol’ Rog couldn’t have been that hungry. I mean, the man’s got a steady job.

And he’s taking the wife out to Cafe Nordstrom at South Coast Plaza. This is no Bob’s Big Boy all-you-can-eat buffet, if you catch my drift. At the Cafe, we’re talking strictly a la carte. There aren’t any freebee seconds here.

So what gives?

I say it’s got to be something about Nordstrom, maybe something in the air. Strange things have been happening at their upscale department stores lately. Enough to give us shoppers a little scare.

Sure, I know. It’s always been a jungle out there. Shopping is never a day at the beach. But, believe me, one can do a lot worse than a browse through Nordstrom.

Just try taking in the Price Club on a Saturday afternoon.

Like Nordstrom, the Price Club is the kind of store where you wouldn’t mind getting a bite to eat. Everybody always arrives hungry.

So you wait in line for your sample. It doesn’t matter of what. Microwave burritos, canned chicken hash, you really don’t ask. Except by the time you make it up to the server, oops, they’re all out. You’ll just have to come back.

The guy off to the side, meantime, is finishing off his third round. He’s got the system down pat.

Or how about taking a run through Toys R Us after work? Now there’s a great way to pass the time. Do you work here? Do you work here? Everyone always denies it when asked.

Nordstrom, on the other hand, has always been an oasis. They’ve got a pianist, in black tie, who tinkles the keyboard. They send customers thank-you cards in the mail. They give your child a balloon after you drop a wad on a pair of new Nordie kiddie shoes.

Nordstrom, in other words, was always very nice.

Now they’ve got an altercation in the lunchroom--and a really weird one at that.

“I was assaulted while waiting in line,” Stanton explains. “He made a swearing expression behind me, right in my ear. . . . Then he tapped me on the chest. He stepped back a couple of steps, looked for a place to sit and fell back.”

I couldn’t get ahold of Kashiyarandi to verify Stanton’s story, but I tell you, the whole thing sounds mighty strange.

Some guy from El Cerrito, which is in the Bay Area, comes down and mixes it up with our supervisor. I wonder if he had a Medfly in his pocket, too.

And then there’s this:

Police say Kashiyarandi, complaining of neck pains, was taken to a hospital, except the hospital says they have no record that he’s been there. Each man, meantime, says he’ll file a complaint against the other. Both demand that justice be done.

So maybe Chef Nordie used the wrong kind of imported mushrooms in his soup du jour that day. The aromas wafting over that lunch line can get pretty strong.

Or ions. Yeah, that’s got to be it. A buildup of negative ions in the Nordstrom ventilation system. That would explain the Stanton-Kashiyarandi bout, and it fits in nicely with the rest of the un-niceness that we’ve been reading about.

What? You haven’t heard about the rest of this sordid affair?

The word is that all those smiling Nordies aren’t nice to us because they like us but because they want to sell us something--desperately.

I know. It’s a terrible shock.

It seems Nordies have sales quotas to meet, and many say they’ve been encouraged to toil off-the-clock to keep up their good work.

But never fear, Nordstrom freaks. There is hope.

Earlier this month, some 300 earnest employees staged an I Love Nordstrom rally at the South Coast Plaza store. They danced to a recording of jailbird James Brown’s “I Feel Good” and held signs with such slogans as “I Love Being a Nordie” and “My Job is No. 1.”

As I was saying: way too weird.