An End to Tirades (I Hope)

Over this past week I've gone on a couple of different tirades (really, me complaining about things). Interestingly this week I've gotten more comments than I normal. I do love to complain (and apparently so do other people) but it doesn't help me keep an upbeat attitude about life.

So, I'm going to finish up my tirade week with two quick thoughts.

I was at Lowe's tonight at 8pm looking for pruning shears (essentially scissors to cut branches and bushes). You'd think this would be easy, but I walked around the lawn department for 25 minutes without seeing one Lowe's worker and without finding those shears. I did finally stumble across them, but not until I had a brilliant idea (now I need to find a way to sell it).

It's quite obvious to me the larger stores cannot give good customer service (or are unwilling to make it a priority). I believe every store should have a lot of computers spread about (one on every two isles) which let you type in a product and tell you exactly where the product is.

Border's has this pretty close, you put in a book title and it tells you which section and shelf the book is placed (if it's in stock). It even lets you order a book if it's out of stock. I only wish the highlighted map was better.

Why can't every store do this? I type in pruning shear and it shows me the row and shelf where they are located (even, dare I say, with reviews)? I type in Black and Decker trimmer and it shows me exactly where it's located and the price (another problem I had with Lowe's, the prices weren't lines up with the correct products).

I left Lowe's feeling kind of disgruntled, went to Wal-Mart and have decided I'll never shop there again (I rarely do anyway). After being in line for 25 minutes to use self-checkout (with too few aisles open and no one fixing the self-checkout errors) Wal-Mart is now off my visiting stores, and I'd recommend it drop off yours as well. Again with customer service, how hard is it to really focus on getting people checked out, that's the one time you really get my money (I put down a $50 product because I was frustrated from the wait and lack of apology).

So, it's been a somewhat crummy shopping night. Thankfully the rest of the day went really well. But I ended up picking up comfort food at Giant. Boy those two pints of raspberries felt good!

So, for questions... What stores have you sworn off and why? Heck, which companies have made it into the places you trust and will show preference (Wegmans is on my short list)? And lastly, what great ideas do you have which people could use to improve your shopping experience?

Peace.

posted by Tom at 10:33 PM