The rudest thing a person could do is assume you can’t afford a $15,000 piece of wall art, obviously.
Kelly Clarkson took to the social platform X after visiting New York’s Art of Play, a home goods and oddities shop, telling the story of how the salespeople slighted her. Clarkson said they assumed she was unable to afford a handcrafted art piece depicting a bird with a particularly steep price tag and treated her very unfairly.
The mechanical bird named Molly, created by artist Bliss Kolb, is able to sing and dance upon turning its crank, taking Kolb nearly a year to complete, according to USA today.
Art of Play responded to Clarkson’s post saying the situation was just a misunderstanding, explaining that the bird was not for sale and was permanently attached to the shop’s wall. Clarkson was told she could instead purchase a copy of the bird directly from Kolb, but it was not available in store, Art of Play wrote on Instagram.
Clarkson refuted this with the fact that the automaton had a price tag alongside its title placard, clearly stating a price of $15,000. She wrote in an X post “you elevator eyed me saying in a condescending tone ‘yes, it’s for sale but it costs 15,000 dollars so if you’d like me to find something comparable for you I can.’”
She expresses in the same post that the employee never said it wasn’t for sale, but offered something cheaper in place of the art piece.
Who is telling the truth in this situation is unclear, but whether or not Clarkson was right to take to social media and smear the business for what she perceived as a distasteful and rude comment is easier to debate.
Regardless of what the motivation was behind the store declining the sale, your character being insulted isn’t enough to justifiably advocate for people not to go somewhere. Clarkson told X after the experience “Y’all should go check out Art of Play in Brooklyn if you enjoy being treated like Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman. For sure, check it out.” with a thumbs down emoji.
I think the only exception to this would be if the shop’s employees were acting this way out of sexism. Had the salesperson made the assumption that Clarkson cannot afford the piece because of her gender and no other reason, then maybe the public reaction would be warranted. It is impossible to determine if that was the intention as an outsider. It feels like a safer assumption that the story is how the shop tells it, making Clarkson is extremely out of line.
The notion of a multimillionaire coming after a small business as Clarkson did is absurd. The millions of people that Clarkson reached with the reckless post she made is something that could be irreparable for the store and the people behind it. Clarkson could, in theory, force the store out of business, leaving the owner and employees out of jobs, all because of a misunderstanding that was read as rude in the moment.
What I believe to have happened was that the employee was perplexed that someone showed interest in the bird. According to the Art of Play’s online shop, most of their items fall well below the price point of Molly, all at roughly $25-50. Even the most expensive handmade items listed online are far below the steep $15,000 price of the bird machine, with only the top four most expensive available items listed at over $2,000.
