Want to call the Plant Police? Vent here....

Alone while shopping, you bet! Don't hover over me, I am not pinching starts of plants or snitching seed pods. The only time I will need assistance is when an item isn't priced clearly...
Betterbloom, the person you work with needs to be self employed for awhile. No customer gets neglected intentionally. They are our mealticket!

When I recently picked up the Hibiscus at Lowe's, marked one thing on the table and marked a different thing on the tags....I pointed out that the tags did not match the plants as I was paying. The cashier said "oh" and continued to ring my mulch, peat and others. Now had it been me, I would have offered to get a manager for me or at least offered to find someone that knew about plants. I didn't really need 'help' but it would have been nice had she pretended she cared. LOL

I agree it's the employers job to properly train the employee. This women knows what she's doing, just doesn't like doing customer service so ignors everyone. Management only listens to customer complaints, not co-workers. The same customers come back over and over again but complain to me, not management. I didn't mean to sound so harsh, but if I got treated badly I would take my money elsewhere or complain, not take it over and over again. I too like to be left alone while shopping, especially since it takes me forever to make up my mind! After two years I have decided to get out of retail because I can't stand seeing how customers are treated and tired of working with others who don't care. So as I said, do the good employees a favor and complain, please. If you don't like complaining then at least find a business who appreciates their customers.

betterbloom, I agree with you to a point , our local HD would not survive where I lived before, but somehow this one continues ??? They're the nearest "bigbox") Some of the staff are helpful when you need assistance, some of them you don't want anywhere near your chickens when they're laying eggs! I have complained to management on a few occassions and the guy is so well trained in that political correct crockery and demeanor it makes you want to puke ....as nothing is resolved! For my major purchases, I go to the one in Shawnee Mission about 23 miles away for my major purchases. The staff, much friendly and respectful when they ring you up. I'm not looking for them to treat me like a princess, but a decent courteous manner would do.

I understand your frustrations betterbloom and that is why I left the big city and moved to a more rural area. People here even at HD are nice and helpfull. They don't have much work to do with me but punch the keys. I often find a helpful person at all of my shopping areas here in Montana. People walking down the street make eye contact and say Hi and if you need help they are more than glad to do so. I just never bother the HD worker cause they are too busy with too little staff.

>> Management only listens to customer complaints

And there you have the root of the problem... the fact is that problems on the floor rarely originate on the floor. :-(

>> but if I got treated badly I would take my money elsewhere or complain

I'm right there with ya, betterbloom. ;)

Sadly, the Home Depot, Lowes and Wally World all have horrible service here. Every time I complain to management at Home Depot it's the same story, they are training or hiring new employees to get better service. This store never has people to help load your vehicle or look for items. Lowes, hires kids who complain about having to work on weekends and are usually getting off in a few minutes so they cannot help you. Wally World hires handicapped people in the garden department and if you are able to communicate what you need to them they physically cannot get what you need nor can they give you any information that you need. As far as local nurseries here , if you can afford what they are selling, the smaller nurseries never have enough employees to help load your car or check you out. Their excuse usually tends to be that the other employees are landscaping someones yard. I much prefer larger local nurseries. I try to go to where the local landscapers buy their plants. Rarely do they have sales, but the knowledge and unusual plants are worth the higher prices.
lilbit

We have excellent local nurseries /garden centers here in the Denver area. I usually hit one or two every weekend as I am doing my regular errands. I only buy specific things that I am looking for, however. I don't have room in my budget or planting beds for impulse anything!

"hires kids who complain about having to work on weekends and are usually getting off in a few minutes so they cannot help you." I never find out that they get off in a few minutes. They can't get off the cell that long!

Since last years hurricanes, I have found that the quality of employees has deterioated at Walmart. There are so many people complaining about the large chain stores and their lack of doing anything to improve their service. My solution, and I have told the managers this, is that I have increased my buying online. I find more stores offering free shipping and more coupons/discounts online than locally. The other day at Walmart a friend of mine had 3 items in her basket along with an infant. One of the items did not have a price (surprise). The cashier told her to go find the price in the store for the product. My friend told her to call it in on her microphone. She claimed it did not work. My friend said she was not hauling her baby all the way to by back of the store to find the price. Believe it or not the cashier told her to leave her baby with her and go look. Well you can guess what words my friend told her and she left all of her items right at the register and left. Had I been told this , I would have gone straight to management to ask that they take action against her. Honestly, the condition that this store is now in since the hurricanes I don't think the manager cares much about how rude their employees are. The store use to be clean and had plenty of friendly workers. No more. It was at Lowes that an employee told me they were getting off work and could not help me.
lilbit

Being a small business owner for over 25 years I found that you cannot compete with the 24/7 of the corporate world. Though most people in the service business benifit from the corporate world. But you must also work all the time. I got out and let corporate vet medicine take over. There is a large lack of personal id with the work that is done and no one needs to produce anymore. Corporate business is in charge and you need to accept that you will be without any personal consideration or concern. That is the way I see it.

One of my favorite local nurseries just closed and they are moving a 3 1/2 hour drive away. A Lowe's is moving in and the access road is being taken out of part of the nursery. Which just confirms no big box stores for plants for me.

Aww .. that's too bad (about losing your favorite local nursery).

Zenpotter, may I ask which nursery and where they moved to? I get to Mpls on vacation and like to spend a little time in Mn. greenhouses and nurserys... pod

pod,
It was Rice Creek Gardens. They are moving to South Eastern Minnesota. I am not sure which town. They won't open until 2008, it will take them that long to move their gardens and get set up. It will be a much larger spot.

No small nurseries will be left only big box. We have small nurseries who are superior and will always remain by buuilding huge nurseries.

It's a sorry comment that Dow Jones now runs it all -- the nursery industry, the medical industry... everything. I had had a few bad experiences at HD, and on the last one (which was not bad -- it was HORRIBLE), I wrote Bob Nardelli (the CEO). I had to get on another website to find the address of corporate offices -- they don't list them on the HD website, at least that a normal computer user (me) could find.

About a week later, the manager of the Beaumont, Texas, Home Depot (I don't want anyone mistaking which store I've had it with) gave me a token phone call during business hours and suggested I call him back. A woman from the Atlanta (corporate) office also called, and suggested I call her back. First off, I WORK. I'm not going to run home and call HD on my lunch hour. I don't expect them showing up at my house, or sending me a new tiller or anything like it. I'm not sure what would appease me on this one, because it's about the 70th bad experience I've had there. I did call Ms. Corporate Office and left her a message on her machine as she had done on mine. Told her there was nothing she could do to change my experience and that I'd never shop the Beaumont HD again. You know, it's not that hard to avoid. There are several smaller hardward and garden places if you look for them. And the slightly higher prices -- MORE than made up for by the quality of service.

OH the thought of figuring out a way to buy my Uncle Fred's old farm in Missouri has never felt so attractive.

I can really relate to the frustration of watching plants being abused. We live far away from all the store chains that handle plants, but when we make our spring run to Anchorage and Palmer, I'm always dismayed to see many shelves of annuals in Costco. They have been sitting there for quite a while, I think. Indoors, minimal light, no water. Just left to be purchased or die, and they are put out far too early for most of us in Alaska to set outside... probably a nationwide date. Sigh.

I have a small nursery business in my little town. There is another, well-established little greenhouse some 23 miles north of us, and in the spring, some of the hardware stores sell bedding plants, but I am the only plant grower in Seward, as far as I know. Most all my plants are grown from seed, either traded internationally or purchased from seed companies. Some plants that don't grow true from seed are traded for, and the beautiful Meconopsis blue poppies are purchased from the Blue Poppy farm in Palmer... such nice folks.

All my plants are hardened off before I sell them so folks can take them home and plant them while they are still filled with enthusiasm. I grow the usual bedding plants, but also offer some that you don't find elsewhere. Not all my plants are in bloom when I open on Memorial Day weekend. I don't force blooms, so my plants thrive longer in the summer.

I am open seven days a week from late May until the ground freezes. I don't have big sales, but if you are a regular customer, or I just like your attitude, you'll walk out with more than you payed for. I'll walk you around my yard and give you snips and clumps of plants to try, as well. I'll encourage you to compost, offer suggestions on how to garden in our climate, and give you information on all the plants you would like to hear about. I'll even show you how to collect the seeds, if you show up in the fall.

In other words, I'm the little nursery I always wanted to visit before I was a little nursery. However, I still get customers who walk away empty handed because they just want to buy a couple flats of fully blooming plants without any conversation or explanations. They want familiar plants, nice tags, and no fuss. There is nothing wrong with that. It's just another way to shop, but it's not me. I don't make a lot of money doing this, and it's really a lot of work. I just love doing it. I feel so good when people tell me how excited they were to see perennials popping up out of the ground in the spring, or how much they enjoyed some new bedding plant the previous summer.

I'm sure some of my plants are abused. There are just too many of the them, and I don't have any hired help. Perhaps, I should say they can get neglected. Since I use my own compost, there are often weeds in the pots, and some plants can get pretty root bound by fall. Whatever happens, though, they all get a fair shake. The left over annuals get to slumber in the compost, and the perennials are tucked in under mulch for the winter. Each and every one of them deserves a chance.

Dow Jones is just a business and financial publishing company, publicly traded and owned by stock-holders. The guy who founded White Flower Farms used to be the editor of Fortune magazine, though.

I've noticed that when Home Depot or Lowes opens a new store, they have knowledgable, courteous staff for the grand opening and about three months thereafter. Then the staff seems to be swapped out with another crew who are too busy talking with each other or talking on their cell phones to pay attention to the customers. The nursery area looks great for the opening. The plants are watered and cared for the first few months. After that, new flats are shoved in the dark spaces under the existing tables and ignored. Watering becomes hap hazard.

We had two local independent nurseries that closed up and the land became townhouse developments. On a positive note, many of the growers are just over the hill on the coast, so we sometimes make plant shopping a full day excursion with a visit to the beach and stock up at the growers frontage road shop.

You must live in Kalispell. The same happened here as far as the openings, The nursery near the Mega stores closed and became townhouses. Wow. How sad.

Much as I love to knit, Montana's winter's are too cold for me. The Sierras tend to have "warm snow", eg, just cold enough to freeze and stay frozen, not too many days below zero in the winter. Mermaids head for warmer waters for the winter.

The Mega stores have put a lot of local businesses out of business. The current trend here is to tear down the smaller industrial parks and redevelop them as town house complexes. In and of itself this is not always bad, but definitely some abuse of city/town's use of eminent domain going on, seizing the older business parks, booting out the mom & pop small businesses and turning the property over to large developers. I'm so tired of copy cat strip malls with all the same chain stores. We used to have big name anchor stores surrounded by local enterprises. Now it's all the same. I drive 40 miles away to shop for clothes because I can't stand our local places.

At the risk of offending, we have been self employed since 1977. We are in the sporting goods business. It is a competitive business and the large discount stores can be cutthroat. We are surrounded on all sides, the nearest 20 miles away. Most people who are self employed have dreams of wealth but don't expect to get rich. They consider themselves blessed that they do what they love for a living. Getting by is adequate. I will preface this by saying I understand the overhead costs incurred in a large city (by the city). But I do feel that when a small business closes it does so by its' choice. One must constantly stay ahead of the box stores by providing merchandise or services which they don't offer. It is constantly evolving and a learning process. The business must find and define its' niche. Customers will travel great distances for that, perhaps not as frequently but will help to establish a large client base over time. A gripe of mine when patronizing other small businesses ( yes, nurseries too ) is erratic business hours. When I travel a distance to shop, I am disappointed to find the store closed ~ be back in an hour ~ from when? Why should I return? They have offered me no incentive. If it is posted as an emergency that would be different. If it is a whim because business was slow ~ no way! If you love it, your customers will too... To the small nurseries and other small business I say, find your niche, adapt and perservere!

No offense taken pod. I agree with you in many ways. What I don't agree with is the city ousting long standing businesses from the existing local business parks so that the buildings can be "redeveloped" and not helping to find alternate locations for the displaced businesses. The redevelopment tends to happen in the areas where the big box stores are built. The rents in the newer business parks are many times higher than in the older ones. I'm not talking about "blighted" areas. Many of our older business parks and malls were clean and attactive, just a little dated in architecture. We've lost many local neighborhood services that way. I used to buy everything I needed within 5 miles of my home. Not anymore.

G_M ~ on that score, I do agree with you. City gov't tends to manipulate. They assume they know what is best for you and enforce it on the pretext that it is good for the community. In the case that you mentioned, I got the distinct impression there is money under a table somewhere. Corruption has a deep pocket!

Yeah, and it's sad that pockets are the only things politicians wear.

Well said, podster! I used to own a small business that competed with big box stores (not a nursery -- and the business didn't close, I just gave it up as part of the divorce agreement :P ). And while they hurt the business on one hand, on the other hand we got a whole new line of customers who needed their mistakes fixed and heard we were the people to do it.

The world was an easier place for small biz before the big box stores came along, but the fact of the matter is the big box stores survive for a reason -- they provide something the customer wants. AND I'd hazard a guess that in the world of gardening, a LOT more people get into gardening BECAUSE of the big box stores. People who would have never hunted down a local nursery, but pick up a flat of annuals they wandered by while picking up a gallon of paint.

Don't get me started on city governments, though. They do the same thing to residents -- they'll take your home if the city will "benefit" by putting a strip mall on your property.

I was forced to HD on Monday. A customer found a piece of formica she liked & needed our opion on the color. So we helped her take it to her car. There was no one around to help tie it together. (Can't haul a 4'x8' sheet flat!) Got to the checkout & a couple of customers were trying to use the self checks. (What a disaster they are!) So the regular checkout guy was trying to get them figured out, while we stood & waited. When it came time to pay he wanted Zip Code #. I asked what for, & he mumbled something about building new stores.
I had to go back later for another piece of formica, I told the clerk it wasn't a of their business what my zip code was. She said the register wouldn't work unless # is entered. I gave her a # out of the blue. I don't need another one of the junkie stores anywhere. Junkie, that's another story. I don't know how they stay in business, they do not get a lot of people shopping there. Menards, an old private owned, upper midwest lumber yard, is always busy, 4 to 5 times as many cars in their lot at any time. They have lots of employees & many have been there for years. One lady I know was there when we moved here in 1982. They all carry radios & call for forklifts or whatever else you need. Big items they load for you if you ask. Lots of times you don't need to ask. The guy that started this company is still in charge, even though it has grown to be large Corp.
Bernie

My zip code has changed to 12345 for any store requiring a zip code to use the cash register. I've actually left the merchandise and walked out on a few stores because of their invasive questions. A Radio Shack once refused to sell me a $2 part unless I gave my name and address! I get enough junk mail already. I don't need to be on any more mailing lists.

Garden Mermaid, that's a good zip code!

garden mermaid, we have the same zip code!

And my phone number is 555-1234 and I live at 123 Main Street, Anytown, FL. All mail should be sent to the attention of Jane Smith.

As a Full-Fledged Marketroid (everybody's got to earn a living), I understand why they ask. And as a marketroid, I understand a LOT of people are going to provide bogus info, including ME.

Shelflife,

Good for you! I love it!

I will certainly remember this , as it always aggravates me no end, when asked this by a cashier.

Deanna

Gee, I am not alone!
HD also thinks they need to look at your debit card when you punch in the code, are you kidding, I almost got in a fight with one cashier there. Another reason to aviod that store if at all possible.
Bernie

I use the phone number from that old pop song, how did it go.....867-5309 . Wonder how many times someone still tries that number and asks for Jenny?

I do understand the need for gathering market data, but there are times and places that I find acceptable for such, and times and places I DO NOT find acceptable. Asking for zip, address and phone info should be optional, not mandatory in order to use the register. I think the actual 1235 zip is Schenechtedy, NY. It's amazing how many HDs they seem to need there based on market info. LOL!

>>and times and places I DO NOT find acceptable

Oh, I'm right there with ya. But the fact of the matter is, more people will give the info without even blinking than those who will give bogus info and so, marketroids are going to ask... every time they can, reasonable or not.

Because marketroids LOVE data as much as most DGers love plants. ;)

This is an indirect discussion of the influence of computers in our lives. Just how do we utilize the benefits (?) of computers and how do they improve (?) our lives?

Yes Soferdig, the computer has done this to us. The infinite amount of data they accumulate and the unbelievable time they consume...

On Shelflifes' post this am: "AND I'd hazard a guess that in the world of gardening, a LOT more people get into gardening BECAUSE of the big box stores."

I believe you are absolutely correct. We see it daily. The box store will often spike an interest in a hobby and the inquisitive person will seek more information.

We find also that competition IS good for business. If we are the only stocking store, people will look at our prices and think we are too high. If they can look at the local hdwe and their prices are higher (but they can still charge there) and the discount house is cheaper but they don't have credit or offer service, this gives the customer an option. It shows that we aren't overpriced, they are simply suffering sticker shock.

CountryGardens, I have been in Menards in Mn. We don't have those stores here. The personal care they offer as a result of standards set by the owner remind me of the early W'mart days when Mr Walton reigned. It hadn't gone nationwide and standards were strict. That is now history too. Signs of the times.

re: Just how do we utilize the benefits (?) of computers and how do they improve (?) our lives?

DG, that's how. And Flikr.

I always give out my dedicated fax line number when they ask. I used to install autodailers for callcenters, so yes, I know what that will do...

I of course think that we pay a high price for the convience of the hard drive. We waste our time being entertained, stimulated, informed, playing, talking, working, and many other time consuming events that were developed by computerization. some of this is good, a lot is bad. Most of what we do is a lot. Yes I enjoy DG but I spend less time reading, being with my DW, and working on the projects of home, work, and play. These all essential to the outcome of joy, reward, and success needed as a human in this world.

Greenjay ~ What is Flikr? Am I missing another gardening fetish?????