Update to follow
And first, thank you ALL for your help/ideas on how to proceed with this.
I went in yesterday and had a great chummy visit with my SA. She presented me with the bag at the beginning of the appointment and my initial gut was "oh dang, it's so muddy and brown and unattractive!" (and immediately heard the comments from this thread in my head!) but as we chitchatted during the visit, and as I looked at the color in different lights, it started to grow on me.
Add to that, my DH really loved the color on me and thought it'd be a perfect fit for my wardrobe and lifestyle. Since he's not usually one to opine definitively about fashion, I took his comment quite seriously. I could tell he was seeing things more clearly as my internal monologue was all atwitter with should-I-shouldn't-I silliness!
I also asked my SA what other colors she'd seen in the PM lately (if I did decide to wait for another color) and also if other grays were ever available. We had a good discussion about this and in a nutshell, she said she hadn't seen anything I'd prefer over etoupe in the gray family in over a year. She's only seen very bright colors (not for me) and gold and black. That solidified my feeling that I wouldn't be able to get one of the other grays that I prefer, and that I wanted to be open to falling in love with etoupe. Plus it was immediately clear when I put the bag on that the size/functionality was a great match for me. I was going to be hard-pressed to not take home a bag that felt so good, even if the color wasn't "perfect". And as a bonus, my SA said she'd try to grab me a black or gold PM from whenever the next shipment came in so if that works out, it'll be a lovely addition to my wardrobe too.
In the end, I did end up buying the bag and trusting that it'll be something that truly grows on me. For the moment, I'm seeing it as having brown/green undertones that I don't like, but I'm having faith that I get used to it and that it'll start looking more neutral to me as I get used to it. I think I posted earlier in this thread that when I bought my vert cyprès P18 it took me almost a week of cringing every time I looked over at it and thinking "uggg it's so horribly teal!" before adjusting to the color and falling in love with it. I have high hopes this will happen with etoupe too and I'll look back on my phase of "not loving etoupe" with a big laugh! And in any case, I think the bag its seriously beautiful overall so in no way am I regretting my decision
View attachment 5583977