Having recently visited a PC shop in a local mall, I just realized how poor their screening for employees was. That is not to say every shop I’ve been to have awful, unknowledgeable, Genius Bar-like, employees, but the majority I’ve been to, are just too into the aesthetics of their employees rather than the actually being, at all, helpful.
Too many times I have been greeted by a overtly friendly female, and at times, a dangerously, overtly friendly “male” employee, to attend to my needs; when I do ask for some products I would want, they’d be so bewildered that they’d simply say “we don’t have that product, sir” when only a few steps away from leaving the shop, I found what I was looking for. And even if they do know their products’ availability, there’s an even bigger chance if I were to ask more technical questions about said product, they’d just smile and shrug their shoulders. Makes me want to ask them how they got their job in the first place.
In fact, I made a thread here around May or so about how I went to one shop and asked “do you happen to have the Ivy Bridge i7’s available?” only to be answered by this rather overconfident guy “what brand, sir”? Someone! Hold me back! I feel like saying Apple or AMD… heck even Toyota to this guy!
Well of course, I don’t know how it’s like in other countries, this is the Philippines, where only the shops in one certain area in the capitol, and PC Hub (has several branches; one near my place), have top notch employees and services, so this post couldn’t speak or truly relate to every shop elsewhere, but certainly, I can bet, that there has been at least one incident in a shop where you met with one of these employees (other than making fun of the guys at the Genius Bar).
Screening for employees, at least here, should be stricter; there will be a day a costumer like me will go through that bullet proof glass door, waving at the numerous CCTV cameras, and ask questions that are more than the simple price and availability.