Today, we bought the sliding door for the new house. We priced carefully, and we had one last place to check before we committed, so we ran up there first. They only had three doors, and there was some things about them that Tim was not happy about. So, we left that store and headed for home. We'd buy our door at Lowe's.
I wanted to check and see if they had juniper shrubs on sale, so Tim dropped me off at the plant section, the plan being that I would check and then head right over to 'Doors and Windows'. Tim had two questions and he wanted the woman working to answer them. We didn't want to drive all the way down to the new build to find out that we didn't have everything we needed to complete the job.
We figured it would be zip, zip, zip. We were wrong.
An elderly lady arrived about the same time as Tim, and he politely let her go first. The woman had ordered a new storm door, but decided after thinking about it, that she wanted to get a new front door as well. She had questions.
The employee excused herself to us, and walked back with the customer to search through the doors. She also needed the door to be added to the original order for the storm door because that was being installed. She wanted the door she had just bought to be installed as well and at the same time as her storm door.
We'd been standing there for very close to a half hour, but we waited. I wandered off to look at bathtub surrounds and found a dandy one marked down from $570-something to $270 something. I walked back and told Tim about it. He wandered over to have a look. On the way back to the window/door center, we saw a tile on sale and stopped to discuss that. Tim walked off to use the restroom. I returned to the desk to wait for our turn.
The woman was struggling. Her problem as she explained, was that she didn't know how to add to the original order. The person that placed the orginal order was not there. She was not sure if he had even ordered the screen door. Her biggest fear was that she'd make a mistake she'd made previously. It seems that employees in their departments need to earn points, and one of the ways you earn them is based on the amount of product the employee sells. When she added to the order the last time, she wound up getting credit for the whole order, and the other employee was pretty mad at her, thinking she was intentionally trying to steal points from him.
She was embarrassed and apologetic, but she said to the elderly woman and to us (by that time, Tim had returned) "I'm going to call for a manager. I'm not sure how to do this without getting in trouble.
We'd been there a half an hour or more already, but I really did think that the employee was doing the best she could. She excused herself from the elderly lady and said, "I'll be right back. I'm going to help these folks while we wait for the manager."
She efficiently grabbed a cart, we scooted back. We could still see her desk and register from where we were. She answered our questions and we were in the process of loading up when the manager arrived on scene.
The employee explained the problem.
The manager stared at her with exaggerated patience. "Is this an emergency?"
The employee looked flustered. "It's just that these people have been waiting a really long time, and so is the lady at the register and...."
The manager smiled, and sweetly asked, with a great deal of patience 'Is. This. An. Emergency?' and then she added. "We will talk later."
SHE WALKED AWAY.
I really could not believe that. The employee stared after her helplessly.
I said, "Well. Thank goodness. It could have been worse. It could have been an emergency."
We pushed the cart back up to her desk, as she explained, "I'm new in this department. There's not time to really be thoroughly trained."
A fellow from another department came over to help and said impatiently, "You should know how to do this. You've done it before." The employee said, "I haven't though. I did it wrong when I did it."
The elderly woman was showing signs of impatience. I said comfortingly, "There, there. It could be worse. The manager has explained that this is not an emergency."
I'd have liked to ask Nadiia (two i's) a question. We had over $1400 worth of product on our cart. The woman was ordering a door that cost over $500. That's combined sales of over $2000. How much money has to be involved before she thinks it is important enough to waste her precious time on?
The two employees worked together, and to be perfectly honest, he didn't seem all that sure of the procedure, but they finally finished up business with the elderly lady. She efficiently rang our frame, our two panels, the screen and a brushed nickle handle, thanking us over and over again for our patience. "Listen," I said. "I really find that manager's attitude kind of shocking. If I call that to corporate's attention, will that get you in trouble? Do you want me to drop it?"
She looked at me, thinking. She's worked there a pretty long time. She said, "No. If I were the customer, I'd complain."
We walked out the door over an hour after we'd entered.
And, yes, I complained.
