Sunday, August 24, 2003
Here's a good lead-in to another of my pet peeves. I was at Lowes today to buy some stuff to make a screen for my basement window. My original plan was to just get some Fiberglas screen and tack it in place with some thin strips of wood. After getting to Lowes and looking around, I notice that actual screening materials are pretty cheap. I needed some screen ($4), about 10 feet of screen frame ($5), four frame corners ($1), a screening tool ($2) and a 25 foot package of spline to hold the screen cloth in the frame. And here things got interesting. They had three sizes of spline near the screen frames; .125, .140 and .170 inches. And of course there's no info on which to use. So now it's off to find the ghost clerk.
I walk up and down the aisles and finally find some guy working in hardware the next aisle over. Naturally it's his first day on the job and he is clueless. He says there's a guy over yonder who could help -- naturally there's no one to be found over yonder. I finally find a guy stacking lumber and he says he knows about the screening stuff -- it's his department.
He says you need to use 5/16s inch spline. I told him they were all in decimals and tried to convert from 5/16s to decimals as we walked along. I rapidly realized that .170 was no where near 5/16s. We got there and I mentioned that none of the splines I could find were that large. He said, you're right, you use the .140 one. He picked up a package and put it against the frame and said "see, it's the correct one" and then I pointed out he picked up a .125 package. He said, "yeah, either one -- it's up to you." I told him I was asking for help because I didn't know which to use. I asked if there was some else who worked this department. And he told me he was the one who was the "expert." -- sigh -- Finally he said there was another guy who could probably tell us and we went over there. Naturally this expert says to use the 1point40 stuff -- but any of it will work pretty good. At that point I walked away and decided to take my chances with the $3 package of .140 stuff.
Yesterday I went to a local market to buy some groceries. One of the items I bought were frozen egg noodles from a local restaurant. I take my stuff to the counter and the cashier asks "what's the deal with these?" and holds up the noodles. I ask her what she means. She asks what's the big deal about these noodles. By this time I'm thoroughly confused and ask her "pardon me -- what do you mean?" She says why are they frozen, what's so special about these noodles, do you keep them frozen, why are you buying them, blah, blah, blah. I say, they're frozen because I got them out of the freezer that you guys keep them in because the package says "KEEP FROZEN" on it and just check me out already. Then she asks a few more questions about the noodles and then asks why I'm wearing a hat that says, "Born Again Pagan" and what's a PA-GAN anyway? I tell her, "it's people who eat frozen noodles" and grab my groceries and thankfully exit.
This all emphasizes something about so many stores these days. What the hell ever happened to service. Unfortunately, I happen to know. It's all in cost these days. If one store can sell something for 3.14159% cheaper than another everyone is going to go to the cheaper store. It doesn't matter that there is one attendant in the entire building (which are rapidly overtaking airplane hangers in size) and he just started yesterday. The old-timer that had 2 months of experience and knew the difference between a hammer and a saw has moved off to some other minimum wage job where they're also treated like dirt. The store is so afraid of being caught having more than one attendant for every zillion customers, that they schedule practically by the minute. You get to work the 12:45pm to 13:50 rush and then get a vacation from 13:51 until the 16:15 rush when you get to work another 89 minutes, but not however in the same area as you did yesterday -- they wouldn't want you to get too familiar with the products so you might accidentally help a customer find something instead of using the standard, "if we have it, it's over there" line.
I really don't want to do my shopping in a vast warehouse of mountains of stuff that gets rearranged every month with shelves that are so high they give you vertigo to look up at them and the only clerk you can see is the one who is just getting off duty or has just turned off the light in the cash register row you just stepped into carrying your priceless merchandise (and I don't mean valuable -- I mean they don't have price tags on them) that you wandered aimlessly trying to find and finally did find in the row past the row they said that if they had them, they be in there. Am I really asking too much?
2fers: http://www.lowes.com and http://www.walmart.com/
I walk up and down the aisles and finally find some guy working in hardware the next aisle over. Naturally it's his first day on the job and he is clueless. He says there's a guy over yonder who could help -- naturally there's no one to be found over yonder. I finally find a guy stacking lumber and he says he knows about the screening stuff -- it's his department.
He says you need to use 5/16s inch spline. I told him they were all in decimals and tried to convert from 5/16s to decimals as we walked along. I rapidly realized that .170 was no where near 5/16s. We got there and I mentioned that none of the splines I could find were that large. He said, you're right, you use the .140 one. He picked up a package and put it against the frame and said "see, it's the correct one" and then I pointed out he picked up a .125 package. He said, "yeah, either one -- it's up to you." I told him I was asking for help because I didn't know which to use. I asked if there was some else who worked this department. And he told me he was the one who was the "expert." -- sigh -- Finally he said there was another guy who could probably tell us and we went over there. Naturally this expert says to use the 1point40 stuff -- but any of it will work pretty good. At that point I walked away and decided to take my chances with the $3 package of .140 stuff.
Yesterday I went to a local market to buy some groceries. One of the items I bought were frozen egg noodles from a local restaurant. I take my stuff to the counter and the cashier asks "what's the deal with these?" and holds up the noodles. I ask her what she means. She asks what's the big deal about these noodles. By this time I'm thoroughly confused and ask her "pardon me -- what do you mean?" She says why are they frozen, what's so special about these noodles, do you keep them frozen, why are you buying them, blah, blah, blah. I say, they're frozen because I got them out of the freezer that you guys keep them in because the package says "KEEP FROZEN" on it and just check me out already. Then she asks a few more questions about the noodles and then asks why I'm wearing a hat that says, "Born Again Pagan" and what's a PA-GAN anyway? I tell her, "it's people who eat frozen noodles" and grab my groceries and thankfully exit.
This all emphasizes something about so many stores these days. What the hell ever happened to service. Unfortunately, I happen to know. It's all in cost these days. If one store can sell something for 3.14159% cheaper than another everyone is going to go to the cheaper store. It doesn't matter that there is one attendant in the entire building (which are rapidly overtaking airplane hangers in size) and he just started yesterday. The old-timer that had 2 months of experience and knew the difference between a hammer and a saw has moved off to some other minimum wage job where they're also treated like dirt. The store is so afraid of being caught having more than one attendant for every zillion customers, that they schedule practically by the minute. You get to work the 12:45pm to 13:50 rush and then get a vacation from 13:51 until the 16:15 rush when you get to work another 89 minutes, but not however in the same area as you did yesterday -- they wouldn't want you to get too familiar with the products so you might accidentally help a customer find something instead of using the standard, "if we have it, it's over there" line.
I really don't want to do my shopping in a vast warehouse of mountains of stuff that gets rearranged every month with shelves that are so high they give you vertigo to look up at them and the only clerk you can see is the one who is just getting off duty or has just turned off the light in the cash register row you just stepped into carrying your priceless merchandise (and I don't mean valuable -- I mean they don't have price tags on them) that you wandered aimlessly trying to find and finally did find in the row past the row they said that if they had them, they be in there. Am I really asking too much?
2fers: http://www.lowes.com and http://www.walmart.com/
