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I know, cute right. You know how jewelry often ends up spread out on a dresser, on top of bills and old Pirates of the Caribbean ticket stubs and whatever? And you inevitably "lose" your favorite hoop earrings when they're really just tangled up in a bra? That's what this is supposed to stop. Thanks Martha!
Anyway, I'm at Hobby Lobby, where nothing is labeled. But that's alright. What's not alright is how mad they get when you ask them where stuff is. Take this exchange:
"Hi! Could you tell me where wooden shadow boxes are?"
"All of our shadow boxes are with frames."
"Great. Where are the frames?"
(Dramatic rolling of eyes) "Around the CORNER."
Now, I accept some responsibility here - maybe if I had kept on walking, I would have run into the frames area, and eventually the shadow boxes. About 5 minutes later though, I was looking for something kind of obscure - sawtooth hangers - and saw a different employee walking by.
"Excuse me, ma'am!"
(Woman keeps walking, does not turn around.)
"Hi, hey - do you work here?" (Run a little to catch up to her)
"Yes."
"Do you know where basic hardware is? Specifically, sawtooth hangers, for mounting artwork on the wall."
"That's like..." - sigh - "...on the complete opposite side of the store."
"Alright. Near the bathrooms? Near the scrapbooking stuff?"
"Over there. Where I'm pointing." (Gestures vaguely, indeed, to the "opposite" side of the store, indicating with her hand that I shall find hardware somewhere in between party favors and foliage, because those are the two ends of the entire west wall. Oh, I see now! Like, in this quadrant of the store, I'll find something that's about the size of a nail! Great, thanks!)
Hey Hobby Lobby, if you don't want customers asking silly questions, how about labeling the f^*ing store. "Wood." "Paint." "Yarn." Things like that.
Maybe it's because crafty women seem so nice, as a general demographic - old ladies with their knitting needles, teachers with their iron-on watermelon decals, moms with their driveway chalk for the kiddos - that I expect these kind of people to staff Hobby Lobby. But that would be a wrong assumption. A complete opposite assumption. Dawn B. at Yelp Austin put it so much better than I about a month ago:
"this hobby lobby is the suck. but not in the good way. the employees are all dead. no one wants to help you. i think they were all hiding as i saw no one working the sales floor."
Hee. Seriously though - why so grumpy-pants, HL employees?
