Why I Hate Chain Stores

Shopping is not my thing. Small, owner run stores are good, especially if I get to shop with the owner or the owner trains their staff well. Big stores throw me over the ledge. Sometimes I don’t have a choice. Today was a prime example.

I recently bought some olive colored pants. Not my normal color, but I thought I needed a new color. The problem with a new color is I needed new shoes. So I went in search. My normal shopping attention span is about an hour. I wasted 40 minutes at the first store trying desperately to make something work.

When nothing was right I sat down in the store and looked online. I found something, but the shipping promise was too long so I got back in my car and decided I would try one more store.

When looking online Nordstrom Rack had a couple promising options. I knew full well my Nordstrom rack would not have the online shoes I saw, but I thought, “what the hell, let’s give it a try.” I drove all the way over there. The place was hopping. I wound my way back to the shoes only to find a big construction site right at the size ten section. I squeezed my way between the power tools and the rack and looked.

The shoes I saw online were certainly not there, but I did find some athletic looking shoes I liked and a more grown up pair at a good enough price. On the way toward the check out I tried on some sweaters and picked one that went with my new pants. I considered a Barbour rain coat but walked away from it. I was actually happy that I had found three things in a relatively short period of time. I went to the check out queue.

I was sixth in line with two checkout people working. One employee was standing there as her customer was on a landline phone arguing with someone. The second employee was helping a father and two young kids. One of the kids had found a package of candy that had no price. The employee could not ring it up.

She called over a manager and then the two of them spent ten minutes, both with an identical package of the same candy inputting barcode information on their phones trying to come up with a price! Candy! The item could not be more than $3. Two employees each spending ten minutes was a total of 20 minutes in employee time.

In my frustration as no customers were helped ahead of me, I suggested they give the kids the candy and stop wasting time trying to make .05¢ profit while spending $30 of employee time, let alone pissing off all the customers waiting. (By then there were another 10 people behind me.)

The idea of giving the candy was not acknowledged. So I asked them to get more cashiers. The woman with the customers arguing on the phone made the brilliant decision to open a different register and help someone while the old woman trying with whomever on the phone continued for at least 15 minutes.

Eventually the candy ringer found a price, charged the Dad and they paid and left. It was under $3!!

As I was exiting the store, the manager who had been looking online for the candy price along with the checkout girl, was standing by the door. I told him that having two of them work on that one candy transaction at the expense of all the other customers waiting in line was a poor choice. He thanked me for my feed back in that condescending way someone who does not care, nor probably does not understand productivity versus profitability would. Little did he know I would post the story on my blog and tag Nordstroms. You may be the rack version, but customer service is still about the only way to keep customers these day. Make smarter choices.