Jim Redelfs wrote:

I'd probably get the wrong answer, maybe from some
salesperson afraid to admit to not knowing.

I'm also pretty accomplished at admitting I don't know.

I am afraid that if I DIDN'T know the answer, but made one up and
delivered it to the customer, I would get it wrong or someone would
overhear my b.s. and call me on it. The worst would be that my wrong
information resulted in poor service to the customer.

Wow, you need to come over here and teach seminars to retail people on
how to say, "Sorry, I don't have that information," or maybe to the
management on why it's better to admit you don't know something rather
than look ignorant. There is a horrible dearth of that around here,
even when I ask the waffling retail people to their face, "are you
trying to say you don't have the answer to that question?" It's like
there is some unwritten law in retail around here of "Death before
admitting you don't know something."

The other thing that REALLY irks me is if you ask if they carry
something and they say, "Did you see it on the shelf?" If I did, I
wouldn't be asking. (this, of course, is ludicrously counterbalanced
with the question by the cashier, "Did you find everything you were
looking for?" One of these days I am going to be able to tell the
cashier that I couldn't find something because the person on the floor
refused to help, and then I bet heads will roll.) My eyes are not
always as good as they used to be, and sometimes a second pair or eyes
to find something is helpful, like the nice pharmacist that found the
OTC med for me when I told him that I thought it should be located
around such-and-such category but I didn't see it.