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Alert sales staff a thing of the past?
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It's not fraud, but it sure is annoying . . . .
As the wave of retail bankruptcies goes on and on, plenty of other companies are working hard to stay out of the hole.
But oddly, at a time when jobs are scarce and hiring is frozen, a lot of workers are hardly working.
In many places, staffers seem to be undergoing an epidemic of apathy. Why?
Maybe it's the result of knowing your meaningless job is hanging by a thread, while the idiot execs who've bunged everything up have a fat golden parachute waiting for them in the remote case that they get the firing they deserve.
I feel the pain of those who endure working for heartless corporate monoliths, but Lord there are a lot of folks slacking it up.
Take Home Depot, for instance. Slacking apparently has become part of a management philosophy at HD, which as usual is having a bad quarter. It's hard to find in-store help at HD in the best of years, a reflection I couldn't help making as I recently failed to find anyone in three departments who could complete a simple task.
And of course they've put in automatic checkout stands to eliminate personnel and make it difficult to buy products.
So I'm on way way out, and notice that they've got not one but two greeters prattling at people coming into the store.
They cheerfully greeted me as I left empty handed.
Elsewhere it's just plain weird.
Ever the curmudgeon, I'm not good at waiting for fools in even the best of times, but lately I've been more than typically forced to abandon hope of buying products and just leave. Apparently the folks at business schools--which fill the halls of corporate America--do not teach folks a whole lot about the importance of actually selling a product.
Recent disgusted departures:
Orchard Supply: split after being the only customer at the paint counter listening to the clerk carry on an inspid personal phone conversation. The physical contortions she underwent to pretend not to notice me almost made the whole thing worthwhile.
Safeway: Who's the jerk who walks off and leaves a cart full of perishables? Probably me. Safeway seems to have developed some sort of algorithm to predict when customers will be present--and close all the checkout lines. Sure, it's a free-for-all if you show up at some weird hour, but the store somehow has a means of having minimal staff at times like 5:30 p.m., when hordes of consumers throng the aisles, trying to decide between Jack Daniels and rat poison.
Strangely, there is usually a reverse correlation between the tiny number of clerks and the mob of employees who wander the aisles asking if you need help. And they've been trained to pop up in the most embarrassing places, like the aisle clearly marked "Excruciatingly embarrassing rectal medications."
Chili's: Last time I went in the local outlet to fill my arteries with the equivalent of tallow, there were two customers. And no staff in sight for quite a good long time. Great marketing strategy--for Applebees.
Marshalls: Their clothes are cheap enough and in sufficiently poor taste for me--but I still have to work for a living and I can't do it while standing in line.
This place actually seems hell bent for leather on going out of business--lines thirty feet long for the one clerk in attendance are common. And there's usually a Ross Dress For Less within two or three blocks. Who left those extra large leopard print boxers and a war surplus toaster over there? Not me--unless you've got proof on videotape.
Rite Aid: Another place with nine empty checkout line, one clerk, and sixteen uncomfortable customers bearing ant-itch ointments. Survival hint: chug that Nyquil while you're waiting. Again, a near equivalent--Longs--is across the street, has the same products, and offers one-third the wait time.
7-11: No, wait--they very conscientiously threw me out. That's actually good customer service.
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