Your best and worst shopping experience

Eoe--

You and my friend sound like a matched set. I'm willing to bet that in the Hunting & Gathering days your great-great-great female ancestor and her great-great-great female ancestor knew every wild plant colony in 100 square miles. If that pair wanted a reliable root vegetable they would herd everyone three-four miles out of the way to the most productive area of the swamp and start a selective harvest.

My female ancestors would have said brightly, "Oh, we're camping near the cattails. Guess what's for dinner?"

Or perhaps somewhere in your genetic line you were microbiologically designed to outrun antelope and wrestle wild boar?

I usually enjoy the men's dress clothes section of Nordstrom, and their shoe department. Helpful and knowledgeable salespeople.

One time years ago at Macy's I had a gay salesman feel me up. Didn't think much of that.

Yes, Nordstrom has excellent sales staff, and you know why?
THey work soley on commission, so it's in their best interest to be nice,
sell you what you want, and hope you'll come back to them.

Information and knowledge about your product.

One thing that some new or nervous sales people do is to continue to sell after they've made the sale.

When the customer indicates "I'll take it" SHUT UP with the selling. Or else, you might talk yourself right out of the sale.

Also, zero in on what the customer is ASKING...you don't need to impress every single person with your total knowledge.

Here's the worst example I can think of...I had bought this low quality, basically throw away personal cd player just for a long, several day road trip I was taking, so I'd have something to listen to when I got tired of talk radio (I didn't have a cd player in my car) It didn't even have a gauge showing when it was totally charged up.

I went into this store at the end of my block that sold ONLY batteries (which I think is weird) to buy some rechargeables....and asked the guy these 2 questions....How will I know when it's charged up? How long do you estimate that'll take?

OMG, he launched into this freakin' science lesson how batteries work and how a charge was acheived and all sorts of other stuff that I have no idea what he was talking about. I remember I was feeling ill that day, so I was really conscious of not being short....so I listened, and listened and listened....there was one other customer waiting her turn behind me, and I'm thinking...god, this is holding her up. A couple of times I tried to interject a question, but this guy was on a roll.

Literally more than 10 minutes later, he runs out of steam, I'd been trying to listen carefully to see if the info I needed was hidden in there somewhere. It wasn't. I was concerned now though, because I definately remember him saying something about the battery exploding if it got overcharged.....I don't like exploding stuff.

When he finally stopped....I asked...."did you tell me anywhere in there how I'll know when this thing is charged, and about how long it'll take?"

I heard this SNORT behind me and turned to look at the woman laughing...she said "I thought I was the only one who didn't think he was telling you anything you needed to know.

The bottom line was....He had no good idea of how to answer either question.

Like I said before, saying "I don't know" is really fine.

yes and no

don't generally like the staff in smaller stores - I find them more aggressive and annoying - which is definitely a no on the 'more fun environment' front. When I'm ready to buy something, I know what I want, where it's likely to be, and how much I'm willing to pay. I don't want anyone showing me 'just this other little thing' or 'just that perfect accessory'. Back away, back away.

the yes? in smaller, independent, stores I'm more likely to be able to negotiate the price - if I can get my hands on the owner.

This is really interesting (for a topic and class that I don't have that much interest in). Are A2K members an anomaly? The direction, in class from the instructor, seemed to be that specialty stores would provide a more satisfying experience to trade off on the generally higher price tags -- that they would be better staffed with knowledgeable and trained personnel, that more information would be available to the consumer (or excessive info per Chai's example), and that they would more likely carry or be able to supply the more esoteric items that you may want.

I must admit that that was the direction I was going to take on this paper. But you've shown that it's certainly not universal. I'll have to rethink, now.

This next bit is outside the scope of my paper, but I'm wondering if shopping as entertainment (remembering that in my mall rat days and through my 20's I did enjoy it) is nostalgia, or age-specific, or related to available leisure time, or ... the art of retailing took a nose dive sometime in the 1990's.

Tico--

Perhaps A2K shoppers are informed shopper who have less need for hovering sales people?

My experience is that many big shops are quite happy to order in special requests - some of them will in fact order in more than you requested so they can see if it'll be of interest to anyone else locally.

I haven't done this in quite a while, but I used to regularly fill out the cards at Loblaws that asked what other products you'd like to find in the store. I asked for - and got - lemon yogurt before it was a regular offering in Toronto grocery stores. As much as I like my little local grocery, he's not going to order one tub of yogurt for me.

I'm still waiting for Kellers to actually order all of the Lotus Foods Rices. But ne'er mind. They are far far superior to all within miles. They sell good fresh meats, fowl, fish, cheeses, olives, homemade carrot cake, etc. They also package the meats et al frozen at reasonable prices. Then they have a good aisle of teas, shelves with good coffee, pastas, and various other likeable items.. I won't describe the whole store. It's a fairly tiny place but high quality, and sometimes but very much not always a little higher than the local big market. Milk, for example, is actually lower there. Olives are both better and lower priced.

I like all the salespeople in there.

On the other hand, I bought my Nikon 70 despite the sales guy at the best camera store in my old home town; he was your basic neurotic talker at high speed. That was in my pre-internet days.

Worst & Best- 1983 NYC Heatwave, me and roommate living in a tiny tenement apartment with windows looking over an air shaft. We are poor, seriously poor. We sell personal stuff on Astor Place and search the sofa cushions for change. Somehow we come up with $150 (?) which is the price of a cheapo advertised air conditioner (plus tax) at Macy's. It's Saturday and the banks are closed, so we put our change jar (a big glass, commercial sized pickle jar) holding all the money in a shopping bag and take the subway to Macy's.

People are crammed into the appliance department. One very crank saleswoman is yelling at people to wait their turn. There are very few air conditioners left and she is going to decide who gets one. She divides us into groups based on what unit we want. Most people want the more expensive units. She only has one of the cheapo units left and we are the only people waiting for it. Finally she points at us to come claim our prize, there is a loud tearing sound followed by a crash. Our shopping bag has broken and the change jar has smashed on the linoleum floor. Pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters are everywhere. We want to die of embarrassment. She starts screaming at us that we're crazy to think she is going to let us "pay with pennies" - "she doesn't have time for pennies!". "Pick up your pennies and go home!" I start crying, my girlfriend starts crying - we are pathetic. A janitor suddenly shows up and starts sweeping up the mess. He tells us in this very nice voice that he is going to make everything OK. He puts all the coins and glass into a cardboard box and tells us to follow him. We go to some back room where he puts on some heavy gloves and sorts out the change from the glass. We sit on some plastic chairs and continue to look teary and helpless. He puts the coins in a separate box. When he finishes he says "wait here". We wait, we feel like crap. He comes back in about 20 minutes with the air conditioner wrapped up with a carrying handle and a few large bills. He says to follow him, we do, at this point we would follow him into the East River. He brings us to a cashier in another department and the cashier rings up the A/C and takes our "real money".

We thanked him, but to this day I regret not sending a letter to Macy's praising this man for restoring our youthful dignity. I still have that A/C unit for emergencies, although I rarely need to use it in the cool night climate where I live. Whenever I feel like dope slapping one of my customers, I think of this incident and immediately become human again.

Oh, what a great story!

What a kind man.

Maybe you two reminded him of his daughters, and how he'd hate to see his girls not have that a/c they really needed.

Thanks Chai, I wish I could find him and let him know that his one act of kindness made me a better person. He was probably in his late 50's at the time, so I don't know if he's even still alive.

That's a great story, GW. I'm going to e-mail it to a few of my friends who will appreciate it as much as I do.

I bet that guy never knew he had made such a difference. And the same can be said for each of us, too. We never know when a small kindness can change someone's life.