When husbands, boyfriends, and sons go shopping for womanly gifts, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel for store clerks—these guys usually want to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible, and either they’ll decide in a snap what to buy or they’ll happily take your advice on what makes for the best gift. Either way, it’s easy money with little hassle. Somehow, though, Kohl’s jewelry counter clerks missed this bit of retail advice—here’s how they lost a $300 sale from a guy who was ready to buy and bolt earlier this week.
I usually don’t bother to go ahead and Google for an email address, however after leaving your store on Powers Blvd tonight with $500.00 still in my pocket I felt like Kohl’s was missing the boat on their male shoppers in general.
I’m 35, in sales, two kids, wife etc, and am basically the kind of male that goes into a store if its a holiday, potential disaster, or I’ll be leaving with some electronics or golf gear.
Tonight I was going into your store with the thought in mind that I can pick up a nice set of earrings or something between 200-400 dollars for this Sunday. As I walked in at about 6:40 or so, I made the quick right, walked around the counter and decided that we’re going to end up spending about 300 on a pair of earring that I thought the wife would enjoy. Now I don’t know about you, but for me this kind of decision takes about 2 minutes (Please don’t let my wife know this, as she would misinterpret my ability to quickly choose something for her as not caring enough)
So I looked up and around to locate the counter person so that way I could make the purchase, and quickly exit the store before I got caught between a crowd and a sale (This did happen to me the time I brought my daughter into your store to get a new coat because she lost her old one. I accidentally was standing in the aisle waiting to pay when had to push my kids to safety because a restocking of some items was going on in the ladies dept.)
Anyway, back to the jewelry/earrings – I am watching the counter person empty out and count up her drawer (It’s about 6:55) and it turns out she can’t hear me, or the other two gentlemen at the counter at that time. Now I am all for hiring people w/ handicaps but I do not believe this counter person was deaf, however I am unable to prove that due to her not flinching as the gentleman next to me was surely heard by someone 50 ft away.
After this, I just left.
Now, I have ran a dollar store for two years out of school for my family, I even worked for Lord and Taylors before they turned into just another store, and I can’t help but feel that if employees where trained or reminded before holidays like xmas or mothers day that people like myself would be coming into the store, usually they will have the $$ to spend and where just to come right up and say something like “Hi, do you need some help finding what your wife wants?” that you’d be doing your shareholders a favor.
A 35 yr old male who doesn’t enjoy shopping has the attention span of a 3-year-old when he is buying something that he normally wouldn’t. If you could somehow capture them as they walked though the door or wandered the aisles you’d do even better. If there is a store that does that for you that’s reasonable please let me know, I still have my $$ in my pocket tonight.
(Photo: net_efekt)
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To anyone who thinks flagging down an employee with a key is important, you’re missing a connection. If you find any employee and if they are at all helpful, they will know, or at least know how to find, a person who does have the key or a manager who can assist you.
Kohl’s may have lost a $300 dollar sale, but the employee didn’t. She probably wanted to go home. I’ve been both a customer and an employee at stores that were closing soon. The employees just want to go home and the customers don’t have consideration for that. The customers want service the same as if the store just opened and the employees don’t have consideration for that. Don’t be surprised if things like this happen near closing.
@nursethalia:
What are you? Some self-explanatory prick?
Do your job for the customer., 9-5 or get lost.
It’s Mother’s day, not wives’ day.
href=”#c5640394″>mechanismatic
So. I, the purchaser must read the mood of the seller-c+nt so as to adjust where my wallet should come free?
Excuse me?
Since when has the sales-staff’s “mood” been an excuse for sales engagement? i.e client engagement?
Bottom line:
Sell real. Or go home and gasp the exhaust-pipe of your Buick. We’ve seen you before.
===
I’m still laughing at the part where he said he had to buy his daughter a new coat because “she lost her old one”. The rest of the post was just filler material to me.
I didn’t have any trouble with the OP’s letter. But I’ve had this kind of trouble with storefolk. In a drugstore once, hoping for a quick dinner at the counter. (This was in the days when drugstores often had lunch counters.)
Two gals behind the counter totally ignored several of us trying to order – ignored us for at least ten minutes before they started cleaning the grill to close.
There was an angry deputation looking for the manager. He didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Haven’t shopped there since.
And come to think of it, I was in a post office once. One poor guy was trying to serve a line that went out both the inner and outer doors.
Two women clerks were wandering slowly, slowly, around behind the counter. They were not only goofing off, they were goofing off AT us.
I can understand why clerks might prefer goofing off. I cannot understand why their boss wouldn’t fire them.
People go to Kohls and expect service? I go there because it’s cheap and the help leaves me alone.
When I want to get jewelry, I go to a JEWELER. You know, like Target.
WORST EMAIL EVER!!!
If a customer can’t even form a coherent sentence in writing, I wouldn’t even bother trying to serve him or her. The lost sale is not worth the headache of trying to decipher the meaning of unintelligible ramblings.
Been here before, kind of. I walked into a “You Bake” pizza place ten
minutes before closing, asked for a pepperoni pizza. The employees were
cleaning up and rarin’ to leave and didn’t want to make anything. They had
just put away all the ingredients. They offered me something different they
had already made.
I politely said, “No thanks, I’ll go somewhere else,” and turned to leave.
As I was going through the door, one of the employees said, “Well, f— you,
too!”
I wrote a letter to the store owner, decided against mailing it and just
went in the next morning and handed it to him. He fired the employee on the
spot.
I don’t care if it’s fifteen seconds before the store closes; someone walks
in, you help them.
lol wut
I love stories about mediocre customer service: the dividing line on the Consumerist between the have and have not worked retail becomes very clear.
Kohl’s goal is to be a self service store. They don’t advertise that fact since it doesn’t sound very attractive.
Their payroll dollars are heavily budgeted towards overnight and early morning stocking. Their goal is to have every size, color, style, etc. available so you can grab it yourself. That obviously doesn’t always happen.
I worked at Service Merchandise (if anyone remembers that) in college and I know what it’s like to earn zip and deal with idiotic customers, especially at closing time.
That being said, there’s no way I’d be able to get away with treating a customer like this clerk did. I go to stores and I’m appalled at the low quality of customer service (granted, I live in NJ). I’ve heard the excuse that these clerks just make minimum wage, so why should they expend any real effort? Well, so did I, I tried to do a decent job at it regardless. If they can’t handle doing a job right at that level, why should anyone entrust them with a more responsible job at higher pay?
A couple of things here:
First, this guy was ready to be angry from the moment he walked into the store. I get customers like this from time to time. He was probably angry about having to buy the gift in the first place, didn’t want to spend the money anyhow, and wanted a good reason to have both of those things. I have no reason to trust his babble about the clerk anyhow. I have seen the kinds of complaints that people will sit down and write about retail workers, and 99.9% of the time, the customer is the one having the off day, not necessarily the retail worker.
Second, if we assume this guy is 100% accurate in his description of the situation, the issue isn’t usually a customer service issue but a payroll issue. When the economy takes a dive, stores start stretching their resources pretty thin, and the end result of that is tired and disgruntled workers that aren’t (and quite literally can’t be) as attentive as they could if they were being paid better and staffed well. Most retail workers I know like people, and they like to help people find what they need, but at some point you simply aren’t getting paid to mess with a guy like this one.
wtf? So he’s whining the sales WOMAN didn’t drop everything in the middle of her job and put all her attention on HIM. Cuz that’s what women are for, flattering and assisting men.
@timmus: Decent service is a little necesary when all the products are locked under a case.
@nardo218: I’m fairly certain it had nothing to do with her gender and everything to do with employees not doing their jobs and attending to customers. I’m guessing a simple “I’ll be with you in one second” would’ve sufficed.
I think he was most upset by not finding out what the sale price would be when the earrings were rung up. When you shop at Kohls, everything rings up at a lower price. It’s like magic.
@midwestkel: I gotta laugh, as I sit here in the Springs myself… I knew EXACTLY the store that he meant in the email. I tell ya, there are two here, and I wouldnt step foot in the one on Powers if you paid me. Circle, I’m there… no way on Powers. Though I figure most of the shit on Powers is like that
@e.varden: I’m not saying the customer has to do anything. I’m just saying don’t be surprised if you get poor service near closing because the employees are going to have other things on their minds, like going home. If you do experience this and aren’t happy, talk to a manager. I’m not saying you have to accept it, I’m just trying to set the right expectation for what you might see happening. Personally, I wouldn’t be buying something that fast, that ill-advised, and that close to closing.
I’m sure the guy has a legit complaint but it’s hard to tell when someone can’t decide whether he’s sending a complaint or writing what he considers to be a witty missive. So he ended up doing a half-assed job of both.
@nardo218:
Truer words were never spoken but you forgot cooking and cleaning.
What blows my mind is why stories about a single employee (one person) get put up here. They’re just one damn employee. Waste of time, not something to judge a corporation by, unless the person is violating laws and the company doesn’t respond with punishment.
@burgundyyears: Anytime you can dis a crappy post while also dissing a crappy sit-com – kudos! Masterful!
And after Googling:
“dollar store” “35 year old jackass”
I learned that the poster is actually the head writer for Life According to Jim.
After re-reading the letter and article and some comments, I have to agree totally with the situation.
This problem is not just at Kohls. Its about everywhere in retail. At one time I was in sales and earned up to 13% commission on furniture. It was a nice living. However, Somewhere down the line companies have stripped the commission away to almost nothing and hired in teenage flunkies to take the place of skilled sales staff and management. Therefore, The quality of service has gone down in many retail places.
So he wants to be accosted as he walks in the door? Really?
It’s things like that that MAKE most men hate shopping.
@laserjobs:
Funny you say that because I have ADD/ADHD/whatever the hell it’s called these days and the whole time, while I was reading his novel, I kept thinking “This sounds like me when the ADDerall wears off!”
Not that the guy doesn’t have a legit complaint, but there’s two problems with his reaction to the situation.
1. The letter is long and rambling. The entire thing could have easily been cut by more than half and been communicated much more effectively.
2. That there’s even a letter in the first place. This is an over reaction to one instance of mediocre/bad service. The situation should first have been dealt with the store manager. That’s where you can get the most immediate resolution to your problem. If that fails, or there is a chronic issue that has not been addressed, that’s when you should be sending letters to corporate. Sending letters for single instances of bad service is just going to make them not take other letters as seriously.
I don’t think this guy’s complaint was so much about an isolated incidence of bad service. I think his message is that stores, including Kohls, should profile shoppers and tend to them accordingly, and because they didn’t do that in his case, they lost a quick sale.
His shopper type would include all narcissistic men shopping in a woman’s department of any sort, who is 35 with an attention span of 3 (his words, not mine), who hate shopping for anyone other than themselves and who are willing to spend a decent amount of money on the spot without question if the entire transaction takes no more than 60 seconds.
This shopper type should be spotted when they walk in the door or while they are walking down the aisle. A clerk should be clairvoyant and know instantly by the look on the face or fidgety movements that they must tend to this type of shopper immediately. I think that is his point. I think he wouldn’t have cared if the counter person called him a stupid jerk so long as he left with his earrings in under one minute.
@Original Poster: “Now I am all for hiring people w/ handicaps but I do not believe this counter person was deaf”
Yeah, um, about that? >:(
I’m a hearing-impaired disabled veteran. Deafness and/or hearing loss is, generally speaking, an invisible disability, pal. That means that, most of the time, you can’t tell if someone is hearing-impaired just by looking at them.
I don’t know how you expect to be able to magically tell who’s deaf and who isn’t, mister. And IMO, your comment was arrogant and offensive. It sounds to me like you’re some sort of overprivileged suburban type who expects to be able to wave his Platinum card around and then be fed grapes by a bevy of scantily-clad shopgirls.
Well, you know what?
(signs obscene comment at screen) you, pal.
Handicaps are one thing, but the electronics departments at Kmart and Wal-Mart generally seem totally unprepared for the possibility that somebody will come up and try to buy something. On several occasions at each store, confusion bordering on pandemonium ensued when I tried to buy a TV or DVD player. Sometimes nobody able to actually unlock the merchandize cabinets was around. Sometimes nobody able to go into the stock room and check stock was around. Sometimes the sales clerks were actually unable to recall how to even ask somebody to pull a boxed unit from the back. And at Wal-Mart, many of the display items are often completely out of stock. And when they are out of stock, the sales force is totally unable to even hazard a guesstimate about when new units might arrive.
Maybe it’s just me, but I have this theory about retailers who are unable to handle customer who want to buy something or who seem never to have even considered the possibility that that may occur: they will go out of business.
This goes for Circuit City, too, where I am either harassed by mosquito clouds of pushy sales people (when I’m browsing) or I am literally unable to find anybody to take my order when I’m ready to buy. The last time, this was a $2400 TV I tried for about 25 minutes to buy before I gave up and went to Best Buy.
this happens all the time in retail though. they’re just not trained to talk to customers. they’re told to mention the sales and specials, but not a genuine “what are you looking for today?” plenty of people come into stores with a specific item in mind (especially men) and no one is there to help them.
“Please don’t let my wife know this, as she would misinterpret my ability to quickly choose something for her as not caring enough)”
THIS!!!! My fiancee is the same way, why do I have to spend 3 hours deciding what I like to validate it, or more importantly, why do you?
How did Consumerist become troll-central?
@BigElectricCat: I aggree with most of what you said, also, I’m not the original poster but…
“you’re some sort of overprivileged suburban type who expects to be able to wave his Platinum card around and then be fed grapes by a bevy of scantily-clad shopgirls.”
I do, I do. And I dont see anything wrong with that. Oh, and please tell the girls that I like my grapes to be white, seedless and peeled. TYVM!
I think everybody’s missing the point that the jewelry cases are LOCKED, and only jewelry department employees and I assume store managers would have the key. So dude needed one of them and couldn’t just go to anybody to get help. Not to mention, shit, there were 3 people standing there and they ignored him.
Wow, this is one of the worst complaint letters I’ve read.
That’s it.
So one (possibly three) guy(s) got ignored at a store. Everybody jumps in about what a jerk he is.
Look at pretty much every other post on this site. It’s all one person who got crappy service at one place, quite often from one employee.
Why attack this guy?
His email isn’t overly long, most of you actually apparently read the whole thing. His email isn’t vicious, he doesn’t call for an immediate firing or anything. His email is, generally, grammatically correct. His email doesn’t cite his long history of spending with Kohl’s, which is something that also typically warrants attacks here. His email pretty closely follows the Consumerist guide to a complaint email.
Yet here’s the whole list of blame-the-customer cliches, including my personal favorite from ryanv1978: “who buys jewelry at Kohl’s?”
I can’t take it anymore. Who still shops at (insert place any post on the site is about)? Lots of people moron, that’s why they are in business. I’m absolutely sick to death of “Who still shops at ____?” in every thread.
Stop Blaming the Victim
@katekate: True. IF and ONLY IF we want to take a one-sided, obviously misplaced frustration as a good basis for fact.
There really isn’t a lot in his letter that leads me to believe this guy is not a sleezebag.
@Jim: You know that just because an email is posted here doesn’t make the OP the victim, right?
This guy is lazy, straight up. I mean, here’s how it goes down for me. I walk into Target (I hate Kohls, but I won’t hold it against him). I get ignored. Either I get a manager to do what I need (works 90% of the time) or I shrug, walk out, and go to another store.
Also, re-read the post. She’s counting down the drawer at almost 7pm, which is Sunday closing time for most stores. He says “tonight”. He was probably shopping for his wife’s gift on Mother’s Day, making him lazy and inconsiderate. At the end of the night for the whole store, the idea probably was to get these guys out before closing, as for many places it’s SOP that you cannot lock the doors till every last straggler is out. Now, I’m not sure if when he says “tonight” meant on the evening of mother’s day, but considering the actions going on in the story, I’d imagine he was, and this girl wanted to go home for mother’s day. It is not her fault he waited until the last minute to buy his wife a gift. It’s his. Period.
I believe it would be an *entirely* different story if he were actually wronged in some way, went to a manager, and the manager said STFU. But he didn’t. He didn’t bother escalating the issue. He went home and fired off an email to the consumerist, probably to show his wife “effort” he put in to his last minute, lazy purchase.
It’s real simple. Escalate the issue then and there or go somewhere else to buy your wife’s present. Or, better yet, don’t wait until the day of a holiday to buy your wife a present.
@joellevand: While I hate to question your ability to determine a person’s complete identity, profile, and habits by inferences made from one mid-sized internet post, I think you (among others, this is by no means a personal attack) are missing the issue:
He went to a store to buy something he needed an employee’s help with. The employee ignored him. He couldn’t spend the money he had there because they wouldn’t provide him the means to. No judgement of his (or their) motivations, attitudes, socio-economic background, or laziness.
“Also, re-read the post. She’s counting down the drawer at almost 7pm.”
“Almost”. “ALMOST”. The sign on the door doesn’t say “Open at about 9:00 until almost 7:00″.
“It would be an entirely different story…” if he went to a manager, but he didn’t. Judging from the lacking availability of staff he noted in his complaint, how was he to find a manager? Ask the jewelry counter employee?
I think “Victim” is used in a pretty flippant manner on most posts, but there’s clearly a willing customer (regardless of whether he’s desparate or not), and an employee who failed to put forth the slightest effort to let him spend his money in what should have been a quick, hassle-free transaction.
If that doesn’t make a legit post, Gawker might as well shut this site down because the overwhelming majority of the posts here are exactly the same thing, with different details.
Please, I have some beautiful pictures of employees at Best Buy in Colonial Heights
Virginia. I went with my brother in law to pick up an amp for his truck. In a moment of impulse I grabbed a spool of DVD-rs that were on sale. We were separated in line and after he checked out he had to wait for me. I have a picture of him damn near asleep while I waited and waited to be checked out as only ONE checkout was open on a saturday at 4pm. I have a shot of 4-5 employees at the security reciept checker, 4-5 including the store manager at geek squad and 4 in the DVDs
laughing and talking. No one came near the registers… Suddenly they realized
pictures were taken and all 3 registers
went into service and the 15 person deep line was checked out.
Advice: whip out the cell and take some
candid shots, someone will take notice.
What a lucky gal. Earrings from Kohl’s. How did she ever hook this star?
The title is “easy $300 sale”. If this dude’s verbal skills are comparable to his writing skills, I would debate the ease of the sale. I can imagine him speaking in long, rambling, sentences with no breaks for breath. I can imagine the poor lady behind the counter trying to interpret his nonsensical speech. And while I do agree that customer service has taken a noticeable downturn, I find it hard to believe that the lady didn’t even address the customers. To me it sounds like this guy fabricated the incident in a drunken stupor then tried to post his recollections while in a hungover haze.
I doubt sincerly that this guy was being ignored by the sales associate. Most jewlery departments work (but not sure about Kohl’s because don’t think of it as a place to buy jewlery) on a commission and ignoring the customer would be like turning down money that would go in their pocket. They guy probably saw two other customers in front of him and wanted to be helped first and when he was told that he had to wait, he probably got “upset” and left. God forbid he spends more than 30 minutes looking for a gift for his wife and the mother of his children. What an Asshat.
If my husband bought me earrings worth $300 from Kohl’s, I would divorce him.
Then again, when you’re the manager of a dollar store Kohl’s is probably classy to you. Kohl’s = a dollar store for clothes.
Any employee who counts their drawer BEFORE the store closes should be fired. The store business hours are stated for a reason. If the customer was in the store prior to closing, he should be taken care of regardless if it goes beyond closing time (within reason). I’ve never worked a retail position where this was not the rule. The manager at this Kohl’s needs a kick in the a** for not training his employees better. Too many places to shop these days for bad service to be tolerated.
On the other hand, anyone who hits a store less than an hour before closing time in a non-emergency shopping situation should be drawn and quartered. Was he high?
Congrats letter writer, you are the most boring person on Earth.