I want a manager to know why I'm leaving!

[draftermatt]

Sunday, hardware chain O' Blue.

Coworker C is on lunch, I'm leaving in 30 minutes, helping coworker S pull a $6000 order to be delivered Monday.

Customer is standing at the Commercial Sales Desk. This is where you can special order items, and also where commercial customers (contractors, developers, etc) place their large orders (for example $6000 order).

Coworker S asks if they need help, yes, they want to know if they can special order porch columns (Click Here). Well that's a different department, so let's take a walk back to their desk.

(Note, we couldn't look that up at the commercial desk anyway, since the books on that are in the department they belong in).

That department's employees suck. They're hardly ever behind the desk, don't answer the cordless phone when it's called, etc.

So, of course, there's no one at the desk, and there's a line, and a hardware associate, plus now my lumber coworker are behind the desk trying to help and get a hold of the correct people.

Hardware associate keeps paging to no avail, and finally starts paging MOD so he can find them.

I walk over to see what's going on (only 20 mins left before I leave) and the woman is yelling at my coworker that her family is going to go to Orange Competition, they don't know why they came to us in the first place, as they always go to Orange and they like it better there, etc.

Turns out she wanted Coworker S to "promise" that he'd tell any and all managers about how they "had to wait" (the horror!)

Coworker S told them he'd call a manager and ask him/her to come over and talk to them, for some reason they didn't like that option.

Then the department associate shows up (horray) and they go bother him.

S and I work till I have to leave, where I pass them, still in the store, still talking to an employee about what they want to order. Guess the wait wasn't so bad.

Here's the thing folks. We have 12+ customers a day tell us they won't set foot in the orange store because of how their employees act. I'm sure they get 12 a day who won't set foot in our blue store.

Also, we were seriously in the middle of a $6000 order. I myself recently did a $3000 carpet order.

Do they really think threatening to leave and never come back over a $200 order is going to make us buckle our knees and beg them to come back? Especially since this woman said she typically goes to the competition. It's not like we're losing you!

[draftermatt]

Do they really think threatening to leave and never come back over a $200 order is going to make us buckle our knees and beg them to come back? Especially since this woman said she typically goes to the competition. It's not like we're losing you!

For the record, yes I know they really think that. The magic "I'm leaving and you're losing my business" cures all.

Rhetorical question.

[Mnemjian]

It really is amusing that SC's think that a typical sales clerk has any sort of financial interest in the company. Most get paid regardless if a sale is made or not Luckily the SC's don't know that typically we're excited that they aren't ever going to come back and bother us again! Too bad it's rarely the truth...

[Sonoma]

I doubt I'll buy enough to make up for porch-column guy, but I prefer shopping at blue hardware store, rather than orange store, even though they're in the same parking lot (which makes no sense to me). I recently bought my refrigerator from blue store, and spent Saturday painting my living & dining rooms. I did go to blue store to buy my paint, because you couldn't get a soul to even acknowledge you at orange store (which is fairly common). I had a blue-store employee go out of his way to offer assistance when I was in deciding on colors. I admit I had to wait for someone to come mix my paint, even though it should have been clear to the employees that I was needing assistance. They did come down, and got it mixed quickly. When it comes time to paint the rest of the house, I will still return to blue store.

[Beisbolica]

It really is amusing that SC's think that a typical sales clerk has any sort of financial interest in the company. Most get paid regardless if a sale is made or not Luckily the SC's don't know that typically we're excited that they aren't ever going to come back and bother us again! Too bad it's rarely the truth...

I want to cross-stitch this onto a pillow.

[ThirdGenRetail]

You know, I get the feeling we have multiple employees of the same chain here...

Be cautions about the "I'm never coming here again" customers. Remember something my mother's always telling me - ONE SC can spread by word of mouth enough bad rep to lose a store a lot of money. Then again, I remember also reading someone's comment about if an SC is always badmouthing something or other in a 'boy who cried wolf' fashion, their friends aren't likely to listen anyway.

You know, come to think of it, if you're at what chain I think you are, your lumber associates seem to be a lot like the ones at my store... One even admitted to turning the cordless phone OFF, and one time they were paged to call THEIR OWN PHONE by a Commercial Sales associate... How very sad of them.

[Falor]

I doubt I'll buy enough to make up for porch-column guy, but I prefer shopping at blue hardware store, rather than orange store, even though they're in the same parking lot (which makes no sense to me).

Ours are at least across the highway from each other, and I'll (ninety five percent of the time) drive the extra five minutes to go to blue rather than orange. They don't have SCO (at this location, I know its present in some) whereas my local orange place does. Makes my shopping choice real simple...

[draftermatt]

...ONE SC can spread by word of mouth enough bad rep to lose a store a lot of money. y.

The way I look at it is, I work for a huge chain of stores that is nationwide, has enough money to sponsor a NASCAR team, etc. one customer and their family/friends aren't going to break us. Especially when the complaint was they had to wait.

They don't know the Millworks desk people aren't great. And they had employees from other departments trying to help, and a manager being called.

You know, come to think of it, if you're at what chain I think you are, your lumber associates seem to be a lot like the ones at my store... One even admitted to turning the cordless phone OFF, and one time they were paged to call THEIR OWN PHONE by a Commercial Sales associate... How very sad of them.

I'm in lumber, it's Millworks that has the problem employees, but I get your point.

The problem with the phone is, it always seems to ring when you're in the middle of something. And there are times that we'll ignore it if we just can't stop, and we have been paged to answer the phone before. Can't say any of us have ever turned the phone off on purpose though.

[Shalom]

You can't generalize about a whole chain based on one store. There are two orange stores about equidistant from me. One of them is decent; the employees generally seem to know their stuff, and there are enough of them (at the time I shop, anyway, which is usually evenings) that it doesn't take all that long to find them.

The other one ... oy vey. I went in there once to buy a machine screw to put together my son's crib. (The manufacturer had sent screws that were 1/2" too long for the application, as confirmed with the life-size representation in the instructions, and when I called and gritched at them, they sent me more screws that were the same exact incorrect length as the ones in the box... ) I find the section where the screws hang, and they're all wood screws or selftapping screws. A few machine screws here and there, but I needed metric thread, and there didn't seem to be any there. So I find an employee, and this happens.

Me: Where do I find metric machine screws?
Her: For what kind of a machine?
Me:

Turned out they didn't have any metric machine screws in that location. My guess is that their screw section was so screwed up by people throwing stuff where it didn't belong and nobody ever straightening it out, that they had no idea anymore what was in stock and what was out of stock. Why it never occurred to anyone in manglement at that store to just assign some employee one evening to fix it I don't know, unless they were so chronically shorthanded that he just didn't have anyone to send. In any case I wound up going to the other Orange near me.

(They didn't have it either. Blue did. Apparently M6x2-1/2" screws aren't that common; Orange had 2" and 3" but no 2-1/2", if I remember the size right. Next time I needed one, I just hacksawed the end off of one of the too-long ones I'd been sent. Not going through all that again.)

[Rantsylvania 6-5000]

It really is amusing that SC's think that a typical sales clerk has any sort of financial interest in the company. Most get paid regardless if a sale is made or not Luckily the SC's don't know that typically we're excited that they aren't ever going to come back and bother us again! Too bad it's rarely the truth...

Seriously!

Be cautions about the "I'm never coming here again" customers. Remember something my mother's always telling me - ONE SC can spread by word of mouth enough bad rep to lose a store a lot of money. Then again, I remember also reading someone's comment about if an SC is always badmouthing something or other in a 'boy who cried wolf' fashion, their friends aren't likely to listen anyway.

Exactly! So we don't really have anything to worry about.

[guitardude1987]

I swear, some people think being made to wait for longer than a nano second is equal to being molested by someone wielding a drain pipe and a rust soup ladle.

[mattm04]

I swear, some people think being made to wait for longer than a nano second is equal to being molested by someone wielding a drain pipe and a rust soup ladle.

Yep. If the number of SC's needing help is greater that the number of available trained employees, someone will wait. Shut up and deal with it.