Retail-dom Redux

 

Chapter two in my whatever-happened-to-retail story...if you recall, no doubt from the edge of your seats, I’d gone to Macy’s to buy socks. After completing the purchase from a beshawled clerk who said the store didn’t carry men’s colognes, I’d discovered her, and another clerk with similar information, to be in error. I sampled the samples on different parts of my body and made note of the prices.

Several days later, not trusting my own olfactory senses, I returned with Denise for a sniff test. In the course of our aromatic voyage of discovery, I realized that the misleading clerk had stood maybe thirty feet from a large sign that read "Men’s Fragrances" when she had told me Macy’s didn’t sell such.

Write it off to a language barrier if you’d like, and discounting my reduced evening eyesight, it doesn’t say much about the training they do at this store. You’d think just as sort of a basic approach to sales, they would walk a new person through all the aisles to acquaint them with the merchandise they are trying to sell and the location. And am I being picky, but wouldn’t it be a good idea for someone working the men’s department to know where things men are?

Another thing, while I’m ragging the retail giant, I went on line to compare the prices they were asking for their scents. The two we’d picked out at the store would have cost $108 with tax. The same bottles were delivered to my door for a total of $42. Of course, you can’t test after shave on-line yet, though computer-scents are probably not far down the road, but my goodness that’s a big savings.

It’s curious that one often gets better service on line, too. Yes, for a while on-line businesses have had to prove that they can compete service-wise with retailers, and there is certainly a lot of competition, but there’s more to it than that. With phone calls to two different card companies, I quickly -- and even graciously -- had $60 in late fees deleted from my accounts. One charge was due to my own mis-inputting on-line; the other due to a delay of a check making it across country. I can now pay off that account on-line.

It’s not significant in the general scheme of things, of course, but it certainly can’t augur well retail clerkdom.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.

 

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