I got the boot!

hi all

something came into my head this evening for some unknown reason.

3 or 4 years ago I got a weekend job in the local garden centre. I was to work Friday evenings, Saturday all day and afternoons on a Sunday.

I only lasted a day because I got the sack. I gave a customer advise on a plant. I was told by the owner that there are better qualified members of staff than me to give advise to the customers.

crazy or what?

Mark

crazy...that is my vote..LOL! Lisa

wow, their loss!!! but you won't ever get the boot here:)

Maybe you should send some of your bats to visit the owner! :)

Mark! How could they!? What a mistake they made! How funny!
It all I can do when I am at local garden center and the customers have guaranteed to fail plants in their baskets! And not tell them , that is tropical, and and acid loving.The air here is too dry, hot, and the soil is alkaline. I direct them to a failsafe plant. Why do nurseries put these in a desert area to be sold!? I will never understand! I am a customer so I guess I get away with it. I have become so forward about it. Usually, people appreciate the help.Its hard to not tell the truth when you care about gardening. I would think the nursery would have even more bussiness when they have success with the plants they sell.

Michelle,

Hey, the customers think they just messed up when those ill-adapted plants die. So they come back for more. But lots of nurseries, the small general types, are required to accept "the good with the bad." So we see petunias and tomato in sixpacks in early Feb. and cool season plants in mid summer.

Mark, you might have just followed on the heals of a real doofus who has already squandered whatever patience the manager had.

We try not to sell plants at the nursery that fail easily in our humid summers. Customers still ask for them and go to other nurseries to find them. I've been so tempted at other nurseries to give advice, but kept my tongue, even when the workers were giving terrible advice.
Cala

That is toooo funny! Didn't they interview you and hire you because of your knowledge? And they then boot you for using that knowledge to help a customer is just so......

To be honest I can see that garden centres point.

Mark you are a very knowledgable person, we know that because of your many posts on a wide range of forums. However, to the garden centre you were untried and untested. On the open farm I had to keep a very close eye on my assistants when they were answering a question. We weren't allowed to say 'I don't know,' if we didn't know an answer we were to ask someone else until we did get one, but some of them thought this gave them a licence to make up an answer LOL. In the end all questions were defered to me or 2 other co-workers to stop this.

So in this light, although the garden centre was tooooo harsh in their judgement of you, I can understand why, you could have been telling the customer anything!

very true Baa.

There are two garden centers in my area. One of them tried to tell me that I could grow MAGNOLIA TREES in my yard - in Northeastern Canada. And then proceeded to give me instructions on how to do so. They were obviously (and annoyingly) trained to sell sell sell. The other garden center offers amazing advice, will discourage new gardeners from buying plants which will probably die without stringently proper conditions, and offer a TWO YEAR REFUND on plants that don't make it - whether it's the customers fault or not. People come from all over the province to that garden center. Guess which garden center I frequent? And guess which is the more successful?

Garden centers are all very different in many ways, and it usually is gonna be the manager's way, and that's it. It's not always exerience or talent, but where you are in the "food chain".

Jerrie

Had to jump in on this one'Sorry about your job mark and just crack it up to experience and learn from it' There's always a lesson in anything'Maybe a blessing in disguise'''Sis''