NO RECEIPT FOR THE RANCID MEAT

once upon a time, not that long ago, (and not in a galaxy far, far away) stores and store employees were geared towards the customers and customer service. i can remember going into my bank or my local grocery store and the same people were working there as in the months and years gone by. many times these employees greeted me by name, recognizing me from all my previous visits, "good afternoon, mr. shock" and this, in many and sometimes subtle ways, made me like and want to do business with that establishment. they made me feel as though we were all on the same side so to speak. alas, this way of doing business has gone by the wayside with stores, banks, shops etc being totally committed to the bottom line and the RULES laid down by the higher ups. personal service is no longer practiced but seemingly discouraged.

let me tell you the story of ALBERTSON'S and the rancid meat.

this morning, rhonda, my better half and THE WORLD'S BEST COOK, sent me off to the store to buy some pork chops. a task, that should have been at least easy and possibly pleasant. i found some and bought them. now, here i must confess that i am not the world's greatest shopper nor am i the kind of person who examines each and every thing i buy looking for flaws. i grab what is in front of me and if there is no glaring problem with it (meat turning black or the glass container broken) i take it and buy it. you know, i am a man. we are not shoppers. anyway, i digress, i pay with my handy dandy american express card at the electronic cashier and depart. (those are just another way to get rid of as many employees as possible and are not really convient unless, as in this case, you are buying only one or two items...) when rhonda opens the meat this evening it is off and starting to spoil. with pork you have to be really careful so i am going to go back to the store to exchange it. we cannot find the receipt but figure that will be no problem since the meat is off, it is not past the due date and has a ALBERTSON'S sticker on it and once before in the same situation the store had willingly exchanged it and apologized for the inconvience. i was wrong, apparently that attitude has now been discouraged by ALBERTSON'S and now their policy is:

we will exchange no rancid meat
for good meat
without a receipt.

this is basically what the "manager", a mr. steve st. pierre, told me. i said that you have done it before but he was adamant that is now store policy. he said it in a rather rude and certainly emphatic way. i said, "is that right? well, we have shopped here since 00 but we will shop here no longer." and with that, i dropped the meat on the check out counter and went across the street to SMITH'S and bought chops (and at a better price, i might add) and came home.

i wrote to the company and while i was doing that, rhonda got the store on the line and was told that i "threw the meat at them." in my letter to ALBERTSON'S i told them about that as well. that not only are their employees rude, in order to justify their own stupid decisions, they lie.

in my email to ALBERTSON'S, i told them that i wrote a blog and performed here locally and gave them this address. i will post their response when i get it. i hope they bring up the "throwing" since i have several funny lines for in return. i told them in my letter that there were other people there and i am sure they have cameras.

you know if more of us started complaining when we get shitty service from some place and put it in writing to the corporate headquarters, some of the companies might actually pay attention; we shall see if ALBERTSON'S does.

i still want to write about the importance of position in no-limit but will do so in another post.