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My Recent Experience at Lowes

By JLP | March 24, 2008

Last weekend my family and I visited our local Lowes to look at plants for our flower bed. It was an extremely windy day (as a general rule, we don’t have really windy days in SE Texas) and the outside garden area was an absolute mess. Plants were blown over, making some of the aisles hard to walk down. Anyway, given the wind, I could definitely understand the poor conditions of the garden area. However, I went into the covered area between the garden area and the store. It too was a complete disaster. There were cushions off the patio furniture and seed packets strewn all over the floor. Seriously, it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned or straighted in months (and it had nothing to do with the wind).

To make matters worse, there were employees standing around doing nothing.

So, when I got home, I sent Lowes an email and told them about what I saw. Well, a couple of days later I got a call from the store manager of the Lowes store I reported! This is a summary of what he said:

“Not to make excuses but we had a computer issue that weekend and I had to make choices as to what did and did not get done. The way the store looked was not up to our high standards and I’m sorry you had to see it that way.”

The manager was nice enough but I thought it was funny that he said, “Not to make excuses but…” and then he went on to make an excuse. I didn’t argue with him but I find it hard to believe that a computer emergency should have anything to do with the condition of the store unless he was using his employees to fix the computer system. I told him that I used to work in the grocery business and that I understood what he was going through. My grocery business experience was probably the reason I have a bias against messy stores. I notice stuff that most people don’t notice.

Anyway, I commend the store manager for calling me. That takes courage and I respect that.

Topics: Miscellaneous |