Places like Best Buy and Walmart can't afford to hire and retain people who are both knowledgeable and service-oriented. They can't even afford to hire enough of what they do hire. When you pay somewhere between minimum wage and one or two dollars above that, what kind of "talent" do you hope to attract?
I've worked years in retail, and even held a higher-paying job ($10.50/hr OMG!). Most people I've worked with were either students or "between jobs" or disgruntled lifers who couldn't care less about anything. Many do try to do a good job, but they don't have enough training and experience. They don't have any real incentives other than a better chance at getting choice hours (many if not most retail employees are officially part-time).
That said, places like Best Buy have employees as a means to make transactions. They aren't "professional salespeople" or "client service specialists." They can't afford people like that. Retail margins are too thin.
My approach to retail as a customer for years has been as a DIY kind of guy. If I can't do it myself, I can't expect anyone else to do it for me. This includes product knowledge and finding things. I'm not surprised at the number of retail employees whose "product knowledge" includes reading spec cards that the customer could have just read themselves.
Also, as someone who's both trained in and jaded with professional selling, I find that most retail employees couldn't sell themselves out of a wet paper bag. But that's another story.
Retail employees best left for the sales transaction. Deal with it.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
Last edited by Baraka_Guru; 10-19-2010 at 05:42 AM..
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