Wednesday, September 20, 2000

By BILLY MURPHY
Laugh Lines

No wonder people are turning to the Internet faster than NBC can cancel a Tony Danza sitcom. Shopping in person has become an awful experience. The problems of retail and store service (and don't forget the post office) go all the way to the top.

The mega-retail and product corporations make billions while merely investing in donkey and carrot contraptions to have their employees chase endlessly, never gaining anything monetarily or emotionally that could ever motivate them one bit to treat a customer with even a shred of dignity or thankfulness. Thereby, product retailer employees offer about as much service or care as a dentist offers pleasure.

I have become a self-appointed revolutionist. And though I have not taken on any really important causes like banning razor-blade scooters, I am becoming louder and louder when it comes to the problems of bad service. Case in point, here's a bad experience I had at the Office Depot in Fayetteville this past week.

I must first admit, I made the mistake of bypassing the Staples in Peachtree City, to get the cheapest price. I have always been served well there and I apologize to that store for seeking a purchase on price rather than service. Anyway, I went to Office Depot to get a CD burner. I actually went in once and left because no one would help me. Then after running a few errands I came back and did get help. Help being, a guy opened the locked glass case and told me to grab what I wanted. I made my purchase and set to the task of installing the new piece of hardware.

It was a few hours before I got to installing the CD burner and that's when I noticed the seal had been glued down and the box had been opened before. As I took out the contents, everything inside seemed ravished. Plastic was torn and cardboard was ripped. I was upset to be sure.

I didn't want to make another round trip so I called and got a female manager who was very nice and I explained to her my problem. Being the cheapskate and schemer I am, I asked if I could continue the installation and get some sort of discount for the "used" product I was getting. She said we could probably work something out and I installed the device.

To make a long story short, I could not get the hardware to work for lack of its manual and called her back. She said bring it back and we could work a deal and they would somehow compensate me for all my trouble and travel. Sounds good so far, right?

She was getting off work and told me to bring return it and look up either of the assistant managers and she would have covered the situation with them by the time I arrived. When I got to Office Depot, the manager I talked to acted like I was speaking Chinese in Alabama.

I asked for the other assistant manager, but the first assistant nor the girl behind the counter would even try to find him. Looking back and forth at each other like Laverne and Shirley on a bad day, they acted as if they didn't know where he could be.

The assistant then told me to go and get another one and bring it back and he would exchange it. I am a customer and even I knew that I couldn't go and get another one, they were locked in a glass case. Wow, what a great shopping experience. I got my money back and left my business card and asked them to tell the store manager to give me a call. I never heard from him either.

Not only have retail employees become heartless, concernless and emotionless, they see me and you, the customer, as an inconvenience and a distraction from the important tasks of their day such as planning their break times, lunch times and how to pick their teeth with a price tag.

Yes, there are some good salespeople out there, but they come along about as frequently as a Tiger Woods' bogey. Their mouth might be saying, "May I help you?" but their eyes and attitude are saying, "What the Hades do you want?"

In a money-grubbing world we should expect at least a little more fakery. But then again, until we as consumers take it to the top, it's gonna stay cruddy at the bottom.

Office Depot, you have lost a customer, but you know what the sad thing is? I know you don't really care.

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