Jeff Wisnia wrote:

Koz wrote:



Time Traveler wrote:




One last thing...welcome to the new American business model where
customers are considered disposable nusances. It's a far cry from
the old notion that a customer might only be worth a $ 3.00 sale
today but was worth $ 30,000 over a lifetime.


Indeed, I'm fond of reminding employees that they may think they are
working for (insert store name) but in reality they are working for me
and the other customers, because if they **** off enough of us they
will be out of a job when the store closes down.



Koz (who has dropped $ 500.00 in gathered purchases and walked out
because Home Depot was out of a $ .23 bolt.)

I hope there was something besides that out of stock bolt which caused
you to reach that decision, Koz. I would have balanced the time I'd
already spent picking out the other stuff against the 5 minutes it
would take me to stop off at an Ace or True Value one the way home and
buy that bolt there.


Actually, it was the last straw of compromise. You go in for for parts
and the first peice is not in stock so you modify your plans to use what
they have...go looking for the next and have to modify a little more
because they are out of another item...and so on. By the time you have
had to do "work arounds" 3 or 4 times on something that should be
simple, the little $ .23 item easily becomes the last straw. More than
once I have just dropped an expensive tool or other item I intended to
purchase when they were out of/didn't carry some small part that should
be readily available. As a specific example, they had 5/8" bolts but
didn't even carry (according to the shelf tags) 5/8" nuts. It was a
vendor stocked area but it does reflect on HD.

Another specific example is the wavy wood strips that you put under
corrigated fiberglass panels. They're only 2 bucks each but they only
had broken/skanky peices left and the department manager wasn't going to
order any more until those were gone (" we might be getting more in a
couple of weeks"). Down went $ 200 in polycarbinate panels for want of
$ 15 in strips. Note: The foam strips were in stock but for a
different pitch/style of panel so I couldn't just "make do".

Koz



**********************

I got a quite strong "smell of stupid" at a Staples stationary store
this Monday.

I needed a new ink roller for my adding machine. I went to the service
desk when I got in the store and asked one of the girls, "In which
aisle will I find adding machine ink rollers?".

She said, "Follow me." and took me down an aisle where she stopped and
proudly pulled froma bin a clear plastic bag full of coin rolls,
(Paper tubes.)

I told her again that I wanted an adding machine ink roller and she
said, "Oh!" and took me down another aisle where she pointed to a
shelf full of rolls of adding machine paper tape.

Again I said, "No, no, INK rollers, those little black things full of
the ink that prints the numbers on those paper tapes."

She stared at me blankly and I knew that I had just plumbed the total
depth of her ability to help, so I thanked her and went off and found
a GUY who knew what I was talking about and immediately said, "Aisle
12, right next to the adding machines". He was spot on.

Jeff