you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 104 points 2 years ago (15 children)

It's not even that, it's their ultra short staffing that drives people away. I'm not going to go hunt for an employee and wait another twn minutes for someone with a key to open it up.

Home Depot does that and I get tired of waiting and order it from somewhere else.

  • source
  • hideshow 15 child comments
  • [–] 46 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    Exactly! I’ve zero issues with this type of loss prevention. I have 10,000 issues having to find the call button, pressing it and then waiting upwards of TWENTY MINUTES for the Key Master to show up.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I once did that at Meijer for a switch pro controller, waited 30 minutes only for the person, who was supposed to have the key, just come over and rip the cardboard to get it off the locked hook. We only stayed because we had a Meijer gift card. Insane how long this kind of thing takes.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I don't understand why they don't just use a pickup ticket system. Costco does it for some smaller high end electronic products now. Hell, Toys R US did it decades ago with all of their video games and consoles. You just take the paper ticket to the cashier to pay and then the receipt to a pickup window where ALL of those products are kept.

    Instead they choose the objectively worst option, extra hardware spread randomly around the store for each product, and spreading already shaky customer service even more thin with large waiting times for a manager with the keys to arrive.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    Anyone else remember Service Merchandise? The whole store was just one display model of each thing. You got a ticket and waited for the item to come up a conveyor. I thought it was a great approach

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I've had this problem at Microcenter and Best Buy too. All the salespeople have a key but there are only two and they're both tied up helping some grandma who doesn't know what she wants. After waiting over 20 minutes, I'm like I just need to get this one thing out of the cabinet.

    I know you can order ahead and pick up but I like to sometimes pay fully or partially in cash so I get less grief about expensive purchases from my spouse. According to my credit card charge, when I bought my 4070ti the day they came out, it was only $380.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    The CVS nearest me announces "cashier needed at [item]" over the intercom on loop until they show up when you hit the call button. In related news, I've now discovered the most awkward way possible to buy condoms.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    The difference between Home Depot and Menard's in terms of finding an employee is amazing. I can find an employee in Menard's within a couple of minutes wherever I am in the store. Good luck ever finding a Home Depot employee, and if you do, good luck getting anything useful from them.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    I worked at a store similar to Home Depot in college and let me tell you, they don't prepare you at all for the kind of questions people have. If they cared at all about investing in the customer experience (which they don't) they'd hire some retired handymen or something. I seriously did everything I could to limit my voyages from the checkout counter to the employee area because there was a 90% chance I'd disappoint someone on the way.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    There's a bit in Neal Stephenson's early novel, Zodiac, that has always stuck with me. At a hardware store, everything has a specific purpose. The young guys working at the store can point you to that purpose. What you want is to find the old guy, who knows that everything there has a million alternative purposes.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    What, giving you a pamphlet and showing you a video wasn't enough to make you a hardware expert? (Menial jobs for massive corporations suck so much.)

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Yeah it's awful. I feel bad for those people when I go in there now. Sure they could take it upon themselves to learn everything but let's be honest, for the amount they get paid it's only worth doing the bare minimum to not get fired.

  • source
  • parent