I won’t get into what a horror the customer service levels are in many restaurants these days – from people literally too weak to lift the spatula or other tools they need to cook to the complete lack of work ethic and weak English (all kudos though for trying though… it just gets to you after a while). But food service is a place where variable levels of service are expected, and so too is the service level in a consumer electronics store like Best Buy. But there is one vital difference. At Pita Pit, I’m dropping maybe $24.00 for a meal for four as a large purchase. At a place like Best Buy, people are dropping upwards of $1000 on a large and over $100 on a small purchase. I would only hope that there is some acknowledgement of this on the part of the staff that trains the staff at these places. But it seems that as long as they can (barely) run a till or point and look like they are breathing, that is enough to work at Best Buy or Future Shop or London Drugs these days.
What brought this on is two fold – one is the obvious and stated above, but the other is the way that an elderly friend of mine was treated this weekend at a Best Buy. He is a very intelligent man (one of those that is likely forgetting more than any one of the rest of us is learning in a given month), but when it comes to electronics, though he has the desire, he just can’t fend for himself. Between the pace of the store and the attitude of the employees, a senior citizen like him is essentially gambling that things will work out on their own or hoping that they have a guide to help them out. I’m certain that this is not the only time it’s ever happened that a senior citizen has been marginalized in this way at a place that is more interested in taking the money than providing service and it won’t be the last. What I think it is going to do is turn people increasingly to “peon-less” shopping (aka – web shopping) for more commodities than ever before.
Just a rant, but something that I think many of you have seen as well.
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