On Fri, 2006-06-30 at 21:13 -0400, FoulDragon@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 6/30/2006 4:29:47 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
> craigwhite@azapple.com writes:
> 
> >Most of the people that sell
> >cars don't know where the oil level stick is.
> 
> Okay, given, but as I see it, there are better and worse ways to handle not 
> knowing something.
> 
> Good ways to handle it:
> 
> -Ask someone who's more competent.
> -Refer customer to manual, specs as quoted on box, or web site with accurate 
> info.
> -Admit they don't know.
> -Research it with the customer, so you'll have the answer for next time.
> 
> Bad ways to handle it:
> 
> -Make up something.  This includes 'educated guesses' which may not be close 
> to accurate.
> -Tell customer what you assume he wants to hear, wether it's true or not.
> -Evade the issue.
> 
> It makes me cringe that clerks tend to favour the latter list.
> 
> It doesn't hurt to know your audience (the person shopping for components, 
> will, in many cases, have more technically detailed questions than the person 
> shopping for a complete system) and a little about your wares (I recall the car 
> salesman who believed Hyundai was a Japanese make).  If you stumble on 
> something easily researchable or obvious, it can often cost you credibility on any 
> more difficult questions.
> 
> If shops like Fry's hadn't developed a reputation of no-clue staff, it 
> wouldn't be so tempting to poke fun of them though.  If you prefer, I'll poke fun of 
> the guy at a local shop who "straightened" a pin clean off a processor, or 
> the one who managed to select heatsinks ranging from moderately bad (only rated 
> to cool a chip 200MHz slower) to comically absurd (designed for completely 
> different processors than the ones being sold with it)
----
we live in a world where the effort is to always try to make everything
idiot proof and a culture that glamorizes the idiots - patience and
humility serve us well when dealing with others but I agree that it's
easy to recognize the pitfalls of dealing with incompetence.

Fry's has a very generous return policy which sometimes is to the
customers benefit and sometimes to their detriment. For the most part,
their prices aren't always so great (excepting of course their loss
leaders) but their inventory is generally awesome.

It's a very imperfect world that we live in - I fail to see how ridicule
is going to make it better.

Craig

ps...my guess is that most people that know their s**t don't take the
jobs at Fry's because of low pay.

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