Ignorant staff

prowla

Myranda said:

Which shop was it op? 

Do they have a lot of product lines or just one? 

Does the Midi specialist need a degree on Electronic Music Production, or does knowing a reasonable amount count as enough... 

I'm sure we can all go to a shop and ask very specialised questions on topics and outsmart a minimum wage drone in our own fields, but does that make them fools or us smug? 

A large chain, in this particular case.

I wouldn't say that you need a degree to know how to plug things together. I have to say, I'm no MIDI expert, so I'm unlikely to outsmart anybody.

I could understand staff not really knowing esoteric detail if it were a small shop with a variety of intermediate/ beginner kit, but when it is a larger one selling higher end stuff and with several specialist staff rather than just box-shifters, you might expect them to have some in-depth knowledge about their chosen area of expertise.

The thing is, though, that I would assume that shops should be wanting to attract customers, whereas in contrast I've decided not to waste my time again going to one or two (one's advice is always to look online, but if that's the message, then why bother going to the shop?).

In contrast, I had a good experience in another shop this month... I wanted an effects pedal and spoke with an assistant and described the issue I had with my current one and what I was really looking for; he told me that he'd had pretty much the same and recommend a particular one and would I like to try it. I did and it was just what I wanted. I walked out of the shop having purchased a new EH Soul Food.

cruxiform

stratman3142 said:

Thanks for posting that. Proper LOL moment at 'well, it equalizes your graphics'.

prowla

cruxiform said:

stratman3142 said:

Thanks for posting that. Proper LOL moment at 'well, it equalizes your graphics'.

The sad thing is that I knew all of the buttons were for...

Good use of "obviously" there too; I once had a conversation with someone who said "obviously" so much I didn't know what he was talking about (I was tempted to say "It's not obvious to me!").

beed84

holnrew said:

It's not their fault they're undertrained and underpaid. If they aren't told what some things are, do you expect them to read up about it in their spare time?

This is exactly how it was for me where I worked, which was an Apple Premium Reseller (I won't say which).  Each day we would be briefed and debriefed with targets, that we weren't doing good enough, and that we needed to do better and so on.  Although I had a good grasp of the Apple products, finance options and insurance policies, there was a load of third party stuff that needed shifting, too.  Besides all that, there was all the repairs and correspondence with head office that needed doing.  Training was pretty much none-existent; we'd get fobbed off with this online training called SEED (to add to that, there were various Personal Training sessions which some of us had no idea about yet we had to teach customers how to use certain programmes etc) The management treated us like we were privileged to be there, as though we were on a £50k salary.  I was on a touch over minimum wage; however, the contract was so vague and sly, they managed to squeeze an extra few hours a week out of the full-timers, claiming that overtime had been factored into the salary.  So after all that, the shite management, rubbish pay, and mediocre training, there was no way I was going to read up on other products - it wasn't worth it my time. Conclusion: as of last month, I handed my notice in.

IvanMC

It's happened to me a couple of times. Fortunately, our mobiles have massive room for pictures to fall back on: I always bring a picture of the product I'm looking for. This lads might be new at their jobs, I guess they ought to go ask someone else about the product the customer is looking for instead of gawking at him. We've got to be patient, we might commit some serious blunder at our jobs someday. And they should admit they need to resort to someone else and stop pretending they've got huge experience in the field.