Category Archives: Retail Geek

I am absolutely livid at the crappy customer service I got today at the place ironically named “Customer Service” at Walmart in Brantford today.

Here’s the back story. My boss, who is a woman, asked me to exchange two pairs of pants for her, as they were not the right size. Simple enough, right? An exchange is easy enough, it doesn’t cost Walmart anything, and I won’t have to feel like I’m one of those creeps that routinely try to get refunds all the time on everything (Anyone who has worked in department store retail knows who I’m talking about there).

So I come in and wait in line. Line isn’t long. Great! I should be in and out in no time. It gets to my turn. I come up, bag in hand, with receipt. I mention casually that these pants aren’t in the size she would like and that I’d like to exchange for a different size. The lady at customer service starts processing a refund.

I try to stop her. “No, I just want an exchange in a different size!” I said. “Well, you can go get them and they’ll ring you through.” She said. “But I don’t know what style they are or anything!” I tried to reason with her. “There’s a couple girls in fashion I think that might be able to help you.” No budging. She processes the refund. this woman had at least 10 years of service (I’m sure that’s what her badge said) and knew I wasn’t interested in looking for pants. Doesn’t matter.

Now this is where I’m livid. While I’m a dude that has no problem picking up stuff for women; I’m really irritated by this. This wasn’t some great thing I was asking of her. I wanted someone to get the correct size of pants! I don’t want to be looking around aimlessly in the women’s section of fashion looking for pants that I didn’t get more than a 10 second glimpse at in hopes of “finding some” in the right size. Not to mention, how the hell are these girls going to help me find “some black pants” in another size if I don’t know what they are? I’m not going to look like an idiot trying to find girl pants in the store.

Let’s add the fact that they are under construction, and nothing is in it’s correct place. So even if I knew what type of pants they were, how the hell am I going to logically go and look for them? The right answer is to say “I’ll have someone bring those up in the size you want. It’ll be two minutes.”

Now I have left absolutely raving mad (you can tell I’ve calmed down some now) and have lost what little respect I was gaining for Brantford Walmart. As it is – if I want something from a Walmart I go out of Brantford because the store is either out of stock or the service is poor. Now another reason why this Walmart blows.

Get your fucking act together Brantford Walmart, or your store isn’t going to do any better post-reno once Target comes in. Just saying. Feel free to add your Walmart Brantford hell stories in the comment section.