The Customers I have seen shopping at the Home Depot that I work at all seem to do the same thing when they first come into the store and that is to find a person with an orange apron and indirectly ask them to hold there hand all the way to the item that they are looking for. Then another famous thing for the customers to do is they come up to my register and they all tell me that I have the wrong price on an item in which they then go on to tell me to wait and I get some one from the department to go over to the item location with them and they then come back and tell me that they had the wrong price.
The customers who shop at home depot are all there to find what they want and get out as fast as they can which I don’t blame them but most don’t use commonsense to find what they need like a lot of the customers will ask me where the batteries are located when I am standing at the register with a big battery display in front of it. Others come and tell you sent them to the wrong aisle to find what they are looking for, then you go onto walk them into the aisle and show them exactly where the item is.
I have now observed these people for 6 months because I work at home depot and I have compiled these thoughts because I see them almost 4 to 5 days a week and they all come in and do the same thing. I feel that the customers have slowly began to be babied because when we have store meetings they just tell us to say yes and never say no to the customers and I find this to be a false following because some customers get away with some crazy things like getting markdowns on things like a damaged box that goes around the item because they complain enough. This is what I mean about how the managers have slowly began to baby the customers and I think they need to learn to say no to some people because they are just getting to soft on people when they shouldn’t.
haha sounds like a frustrateing place to work. seems like your on the good tract for the paper,keep up the good work! the main points seems to be about the customers? or about how the store runs and mangers run the store? or how you shouldnt be babying the customers?
ReplyDeleteChris--
ReplyDeleteMy first question, I guess, is whether Home Depot shoppers are a unified subculture? (It seems to me that the customer base includes both do-it-yourselfers, who seem to be the ones you're writing about, and contractors and subcontractors of various types, whose behavior must be quite different. I guess you're focusing on the DIY crowd?)
An ethnography is primarily composed of specific observations--instead of talking generally about what customers are like, can you show us some specific examples, describing the poeple, what they say and do? (Then perhaps yr generalities might not come across as just complaining about customers. do you think they're worse at Home Depot than other stores? Inorder to see unique Home Depot subculture,think about how it's different from Mom-and-Pop hardware store--you don't have to write the contrast, but thinking about it may help define Home-Depot-culture.)
Introduction seems a little abrupt? Maybe explain yr connection, how you started working there, etc.?
Also you might want to include a more complete physical description of the store?