OK, granted it's not a "regular" cigar and pipe shoppe. It's a damaged freight sales place which also has a smoke outlet, but they do sell several varieties of the large bulk bags of loose pipe tobacco and some odds and ends pouches. They carry several of the popular major market blends such as Black and Mild and Captain Black, etc.
Earlier today I went in, and ended up asking one of the gals about a pouch of tobacco I was looking at, as to what else it might compare to. "Is it like Captain Black or Black and Mild?," I asked. "Oh, I don't know, I just work here." Usually, I hear this phrase coming from a teenaged twit who promptly returns to her conversation I so rudely interrupted, of which boy she is going out with tonight, and OMG he's so hot, etc. In this case, this gal was on the high end of the '40s and you would have thought she would have known a bit more about customer service. Doesn't this kind of customer service just get you riled? Doesn't anyone know their store's products any more? I guess this must be getting to be typical treatment.
Any other customer service horror stories out there as it relates to a pipe shoppe?
In her defense, unless she's a smoker, she probably doesn't know Captain Black from Captain Crunch and thinks of everything as a stock number. That still doesn't excuse her flippant attitude, and yes, I would think, considering her age, she'd know better.
As for bad customer service at any of my local B&M's, I never run into anything but great people.
Sounds like it might have been a wasted question since a clerk in that kind of store would obviously have little knowledge of pipe tobacco. Sorta like asking the Walmart sporting goods kid a question about...well...just about anything I guess. Her customer service skills were obviously faulty as well. However, you could have instantly focused her wandering attention back on you through the simple expedient of cutting a huge fart. Works every time!
I've met some incredibly rude people at some local cigar shops. Guess what - I don't go to those shops anymore... :shades:
And Ken is right, the fart thing works every time! :biggrin:
Was she the only person in the store?
If not, I'd ask for help fropm someone else who may be higher up on the food chain.
If not, the onus is still on you -- walk.
You didn't get what you deserved as a customer, so time to move on and get over it.
In actual smoke shops, I've never had an experience like that. In shops where tobacco is just another revenue source, yeah. The owners rarely hire people who know anything about what's on the shelves. Sometimes they even got defensive about their ignorance. I don't go to that kind of store any more.