On Tue, 23 May 2000, Shawn T. Rutledge wrote:
> It would certainly be appropriate.) Half the barcodes don't scan. They
> used to use these old fashioned light-pen type scanners but at least
> the last time, they'd finally upgraded to the pistol-grip autoscanning
> kind.
At the risk of turning this into a full-fledge anti-Fry's flame-a-thon
(apologies in advance) the clerks there (gawd bless them) are so stupid
sometimes. I got one who was having trouble scanning stuff so he'd swipe
the bar code wand over the item back & forth three or four times to make
it scan. His hearing must not have been very keen, nor his eyesite,
because he managed to scan one package of candy 3 or 4 times and didn't
catch it. I heard the beeps and immediately knew what happened, but
poop-for-brains didn't realize it. When the receipt came I pointed it
out. Knowing full well from past experiences that if I had made him take
the extra charges off it would have taken probably 10 minutes for him to
call a manager over (they can't seem to do ANYTHING other than ring-up
crap unless a manager gets involved) and since I had to get back to the
VCF because a speaker was waiting for the VCR I was also purchasing, I
just went and grabbed 3 more candies from the shelf and told him we were
even.
Of course I breezed through the Gestapo check at the door.
> hassle, you wait while the receipt printer (which has done nothing in
> advance of this moment) prints out two feet of paper, slowly, one line
> at a time. Then you go wait in line again at the exit. And get home to
DAMN those printers are slow!!!
> find out your product was already returned once and is missing something
> or doesn't work. So you can go stand in line again and shuttle more
> paper back and forth and be trapped into buying from them again because
> they will only give you store credit because you lost the receipt.
Always, always, ALWAYS ***OPEN*** the package you want to purchase and
visually inspect everything inside. Make sure it is complete before
buying it. You'll save yourself a ton of hassle.
Which brings me to a point, which is sometimes it's more cost effective to
just pay more at another store than to take the chance with Fry's crap.
> What I would like to see instead, despite the cries of "Big Brother" from
> so many people, is a smart card or iButton that has the memory of who you
> are and all the ID numbers for all the various stores at which you shop.
Yeah, I'll pass.
Really, the problem with Fry's is that they can't keep employees around
because the working environment probably sucks so bad. They are mostly
immigrants (nothing against them!) who speak poor English, getting paid
minimum wage at best, who are told to show up the first day in a nice
white shirt, tie, and black slacks, then thrown out into the fray to
answer questions from customers who already know way more about computers
than they ever will. After two or three days of feeling like idiots they
leave to find a real job. One day I actually found a regular American
white boy working the floor who actually knew the answer to the question I
had, knew where to find what I was looking for, took me to that place, and
actually APOLOGIZED for how crappy the experience at Fry's was! It was
like finding, in a colony of chimpanzees, one that could talk.
I felt sorry for him.
Anyway, I'm very sorry for carrying on like this. But Fry's has been a
Silicon Valley institution (for better or worse) for the past couple of
decades, so it's part of the history and culture and gives you outlanders
an idea of what it's like at least :)
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
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Received on Tue May 23 2000 - 19:17:00 BST