In a rather routine trip to my neighborhood home improvement
store today, I managed to have two experiences that felt, well,
“blog-worthy.” One highlighted the
absolute ridiculousness of corporate America, and the other highlighted the
absolute shittiness of the human race.
We’ll start with corporate America…
It all started with patio chairs. I needed 4 of them to replace the rusted ones
around our outside lanai table. So I
went online, found the ones I wanted, and headed up to Lowe’s to pick them up
and bring them home. Upon arriving in
the patio and outdoor department, I realized that the chairs in the store were
$9 more expensive than the chairs online.
I double-checked the website price – the LOWES website price – and
confirmed it: $49 in the store; $40
online. I went to the customer service
desk and waited in line for 7 minutes just to ask if they will price-match
their online price. The employee says “I
don’t think we do that” and pulls employee #2 over. She says “No – sorry, but we’re not allowed
to match our own prices. We’ve never been able to do that.” You’re probably thinking: “WHAT?” I know – it makes no sense.
My next step was to work the online system to my
advantage. I could buy the chairs online
at $40 each, and then select in-store pick up.
Brilliant, right? So I purchase
the chairs online. But guess what? I’m not allowed to pull the chairs off the
floor myself, even though they are paid for and right in front of me. Instead I have to wait for the order to be
printed and pulled by the girl (employee #1) at the Customer Service desk. Then she has to page an employee, who leaves
whatever job it was that he was already doing.
I watch as he goes and gets the chairs, brings them up to the Customer
Service desk, and drops them off. The
whole process takes about 20 minutes.
Then, I have to stand in line again for about 7-8 minutes in order to
have the same girl (employee #1) ask me what she can help me with (really?),
and then she had to check the order off before I can leave.
This seems astonishingly ridiculous, does it not? How can you not honor your own advertised
price? Explain why it’s a more efficient
use of time to pull 2 employees off their jobs and generally eat up about 35
minutes of otherwise productive employee time doing what should have taken
almost no staff involvement and less than 10 minutes.
This isn’t the first time we’ve encountered this issue. Lowes seems to have taken a page out of the
Barnes and Noble playbook. I get it that
you won’t price match Amazon or Overstock, but your own PRICES on your OWN
WEBSITE? It’s like those companies that
mail a bill with a 49 cent stamp in order to collect an outstanding balance of
23 cents. Sometimes it really seems as
if companies (and school systems? And Governments?) get so large and so far
removed from reality that they can no longer connect with what’s really
happening on the ground. Reason and
common sense no longer exist.
While at Lowes, I decided to kill some of that chair-waiting
time buying mulch. I put my 5 bags on a
little cart and headed for the check out.
A little lady was in front of me – she was maybe 80. She moved a little slow, and had a basket of
about 5-6 flowers/plants and 2 spray bottles of fertilizer/pesticide. As she reached the register, she started
taking all her plants out one at a time.
The checkout woman was super sweet and let her know that she didn’t have
to take them all out, but the little old lady said “oh – I want to make sure
you get them all.” Then the lady
explained that she also needed some salt for her water softener, but that it
was too heavy for her to carry. The
check-out woman explained that it was no problem – she could pull her car up to
the entrance and someone would help her carry the bag to her car. But the old lady wasn’t sure what size bag
she needed. The check-out woman pulled
out a catalog page and showed her the 3 sizes, and she picked one. Then the lady had some trouble using the
credit card reader. The first time it
didn’t take, and then she had trouble seeing the screen. (The ones in the garden department are really
hard to see in the bright daylight – for anyone.) This whole time the check-out woman was being
extremely helpful and patient and sweet with this lady. Unfortunately, while this was all going on
(it took maybe 6 minutes), a line had begun to form. As they were finishing the transaction, this
horrible loud voice from behind me said “YOU KNOW THERE’S MORE THAN 3 PEOPLE IN
LINE HERE!” I turned back and gave her the evil eye. She was maybe in her mid-to-upper 50’s.
As I walked to the parking lot, I couldn’t help but
think: that woman is a piece of
crap. Here’s this little lady – very
elderly – but you know what? She’s out
doing it. She’s being independent and
living her life. Bless her heart – it
takes her a little longer than most of us – but are we really in so much of a
hurry that we can’t spare a couple of minutes for those who are older than we
are? I wanted to say to that awful loud
woman “Hey toots – you’re not too far away from those years yourself. I hope someone yells at you and makes you
feel bad the same way you just did to her.”
So the moral of this
story is…big box stores are stupid and people are mean. I really hope Karma comes back for that loud
lady and kicks her in the ass.
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