Retail Is... Detail? OR The Big Box Shopper's Lament
I used to carry a pen and a little Mead notebook around in my jacket, and when things popped into my head I would furiously scribble them down. Often times I would forget them, so I'd go buy another set, and after a while I ended up with four or five notebooks, none of which were more than 5% filled, and the words contained within them were strange and frightening. For example:
eight-legged stillborn pig on the wharf
I have no idea what this means. The only possible connection I can make is that this is some sort of reference to Rachel, aka The Pig at Pike Place. Rachel is not stillborn or eight-legged, or even on a wharf... but the entry was written while I was in Seattle (or perhaps on the way back), and that's all I can come up with.
There's another entry in the book, shortly before that, which means that it came during college. If I remember correctly, someone said it in conversation and I scribbled it down as something particularly amusing that I could work into something I was writing. It reads:
"My aunt says, 'Retail is detail.'
I say, 'Retail is shit.'"
Unfortunately, in the big box era, the latter is true.
Growing up, the biggest sort of store you could go to was a department store. Near where I grew up, there was a Sears and a Jordan Marsh (which was bought by Macy's). Basically, when Mom needed to buy something, we went to Jordan's. When Dad needed to buy things, it was Sears. The key to the department store was that there were departments. The guy who sold Craftsmen tools at Sears came in every day and sold Craftsmen tools. The guy who sold belts and shoes at Sears came in every day and sold belts and shoes. When the tools guy was sick, they didn't ask the belts and shoes guy to sell tools, because that was a different department. In essence, the department store was a bunch of smaller stores within a larger framework, with a bunch of specialists and an ameobic set of management level people who made sure everybody worked together.
What this also meant was that when you went to the Craftsmen tools guy and had a question, the guy would answer your question with three more questions, each of which was more relevant to what you were doing than anything you would have thought of yourself. By the end of it all, you would have in hand exactly what you needed, or advice on how to acquire as such, and with a handshake you would be on your way home. Department stores still work in a similar manner... when I went to buy shoes and a belt a few weeks ago, the shoes and belt guy answered all of my questions, and proudly wore a name tag that indicated that he had 12 years of service. It is quite possible that all 12 of those years were spent selling belts and shoes. And more that likely, he took pride in his job. They all did.
It is a sad statement to the retail industry, however, that retail workers' attention to detail has been completely destroyed by big box stores, who hire people that have no interest in specifics and minutia that the milieu in which they work presents. The average person who walks into a Best Buy or Circuit City probably won't receive any useful help in determining what they want or need, because the people there either just don't care, or haven't been trained to do anything more than "walk the floor" and "make sure to sell the insurance plan". Best Buy's slogan is "Thousands Of Possibilities". The addendum should be, "None Of Them Reliably Recommended!". Home Depot says "You Can Do It... We Can Help", but they don't add, "...As Soon As I Find Steve... Wait Right Here... Don't Move... Paging Steve... Steve, Customer Assistance in the Spackle & Grout Aisle."
Radio Shack used to be a place where you could go and talk to techheads about what you needed, and they actually knew what you were talking about when you mentioned LEDs and transistors and capacitors. Now they just point to the back of the store and say, "I think all that shit's in the back."
The expertise of retail clerks reminds me of a scene in Beavis + Butt-head. The customer rolls up to the drive-thru speakerbox and asks if the milkshakes are made from real milk or reconstituted shake mix. Butt-head replies, "Uh, we have vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry." Likewise when a customer asks whether a receiver has 5.1 or 7.1 output, a retail clerk may respond with "Uh, we sell Sony, Onkyo, and Samsung." A slightly less disinterested clerk will start reading the box, as though this is something you could not do on your own. The particularly bad ones will make something up rather than admit not knowing. Ten or twenty years ago, you could ask to talk to that kid's manager. Nowadays, that kid is the manager.
It's not just electronics. It's everything. Take music for example. Used to be, you'd go to a local record store to pick up new sounds, or maybe stop by a Strawberries or a Tower Records. But the people there knew music. If you listened to Led Zeppelin, they'd recommend Deep Purple. Erasure? How about some New Order? It wasn't even so much that they knew music. It was that they enjoyed music and wanted you to experience it as well. All of that's gone, at least around here. Newbury Comics was the last place to succumb... now they just peddle the latest releases by Gwen Stefani or The Killers or whatever crap is spoonfed through MTV to the masses. The place that sells the most music? Wal*Mart.
Now try finding someone working in Wal*Mart who gives a crap about anything.