The following rant is my opinion. I'm not an expert on anything in this rant, and nothing below claims to be factual past the fact that today's events happened. 'Is' is in-fact 'Is'. If you have trouble with 'Is', you will not understand the following.
Today was an interesting day. I had to deal with stupid people. No, not individuals, but corporations. You see, corporations are 'people' under certain aspects of the law. That's another rant.
A large retailer named M. Best Buy (who would name their kid 'Best'?), bullied several hours of my time, and reminded me that 'reason' only works with reasonable people. This is not a 'one off' experience with me. M. Buy has bullied my time before. More than once.
Maybe I'm the stupid one for trying to be reasonable and give M. Buy another chance. I must be insane, because I've done this in the past with others. I just don't learn well. Maybe I try too hard to be liked. (That happens with people who possess few social graces and high IQs sometimes.)
So, like a lot of bullying instances, today was a lose-lose between me and M. Buy. I lost a lot of time, and M. Buy lost several hundred $ in sales. I've heard several on-going complaints about M. Buy, even from complete strangers also being time-bullied while desperately trying to get help or check out, all the while several blue-shirted associates are wandering around, chatting, or avoiding customer eye contacted better than any waiter I've ever had. They actually seem smug about their time-bullying in some perverted way.
Where is the management? Where is the employee incentive? Where is the fact-check that customer satisfaction is important. Maybe more important than saving 38 cents on a gadget.
According to Google University, M. Buy owns about 1,500 stores. Let's say M. Buy loses one $500 sale in each store every day. $500 x 1500 x 365 = $273,750,000 per year. Let's say their margin is a conservative 25%. That's $68,437,500 per year. Let's say they are only half as bad as I think they are, so they really only lose $34 Million dollars a year due to poor customer service. Wow, time-bullying can be an expensive habit!
Ok, maybe a drop in their bucket. But, what is more difficult to speculate, is the future sales lost when customers refuse to get time-bullied again. Hmm... Circuit City, American Airlines, RCA, .... well you get the idea.
There is a golden lining to my little tale. In frustration, I met M. Depot... M. Office Depot to be more precise. (Who would name their kid 'Office'?)... M. Depot was courteous, helpful, prompt, and friendly. Didn't have everything I wanted, but they were upfront about it.
Then I met M. Authority.... M. Sports Authority.... Same thing. Courteous, helpful, prompt and friendly.
Lastly, I met. M. Direct... M. Tiger Direct. (Who would name their kid Tiger???)... Same thing.
Courteous, helpful, prompt and friendly.
So while I may have lost one friend, and half the day driving around, I made three new friends. I spent every dime I intended to spend, and I spent it with 'people' who at least seem to respect my time.
I was driven to using 'Yelp' at the expense of annoying my Facebook friends. I wonder if people like M. Buy and other time-bullies realize there are 'big brothers' out there like Yelp?
We have to be careful. There are other bullies of different sorts out there. They bully our personal safety. They have help from loopholes in our laws. They operate in a way that skirts typical American standards in order to play roulette with our personal safety. Who can that be? A ship in the night? A shot in the dark? Are they in the lobby?
Maybe there is a larger moral to this story... Like: ... well, if you are smart, you will figure it out.
A large retailer named M. Best Buy (who would name their kid 'Best'?), bullied several hours of my time, and reminded me that 'reason' only works with reasonable people. This is not a 'one off' experience with me. M. Buy has bullied my time before. More than once.
Maybe I'm the stupid one for trying to be reasonable and give M. Buy another chance. I must be insane, because I've done this in the past with others. I just don't learn well. Maybe I try too hard to be liked. (That happens with people who possess few social graces and high IQs sometimes.)
So, like a lot of bullying instances, today was a lose-lose between me and M. Buy. I lost a lot of time, and M. Buy lost several hundred $ in sales. I've heard several on-going complaints about M. Buy, even from complete strangers also being time-bullied while desperately trying to get help or check out, all the while several blue-shirted associates are wandering around, chatting, or avoiding customer eye contacted better than any waiter I've ever had. They actually seem smug about their time-bullying in some perverted way.
Where is the management? Where is the employee incentive? Where is the fact-check that customer satisfaction is important. Maybe more important than saving 38 cents on a gadget.
According to Google University, M. Buy owns about 1,500 stores. Let's say M. Buy loses one $500 sale in each store every day. $500 x 1500 x 365 = $273,750,000 per year. Let's say their margin is a conservative 25%. That's $68,437,500 per year. Let's say they are only half as bad as I think they are, so they really only lose $34 Million dollars a year due to poor customer service. Wow, time-bullying can be an expensive habit!
Ok, maybe a drop in their bucket. But, what is more difficult to speculate, is the future sales lost when customers refuse to get time-bullied again. Hmm... Circuit City, American Airlines, RCA, .... well you get the idea.
There is a golden lining to my little tale. In frustration, I met M. Depot... M. Office Depot to be more precise. (Who would name their kid 'Office'?)... M. Depot was courteous, helpful, prompt, and friendly. Didn't have everything I wanted, but they were upfront about it.
Then I met M. Authority.... M. Sports Authority.... Same thing. Courteous, helpful, prompt and friendly.
Lastly, I met. M. Direct... M. Tiger Direct. (Who would name their kid Tiger???)... Same thing.
Courteous, helpful, prompt and friendly.
So while I may have lost one friend, and half the day driving around, I made three new friends. I spent every dime I intended to spend, and I spent it with 'people' who at least seem to respect my time.
I was driven to using 'Yelp' at the expense of annoying my Facebook friends. I wonder if people like M. Buy and other time-bullies realize there are 'big brothers' out there like Yelp?
We have to be careful. There are other bullies of different sorts out there. They bully our personal safety. They have help from loopholes in our laws. They operate in a way that skirts typical American standards in order to play roulette with our personal safety. Who can that be? A ship in the night? A shot in the dark? Are they in the lobby?
Maybe there is a larger moral to this story... Like: ... well, if you are smart, you will figure it out.
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