America has worse problems than offputting, soulless, cold, inhuman and inhumane retail establishments. Suffering through the degradation of BestBuy or Walgreen's is hardly the stuff of tragedy. Nonetheless there's no excuse for it. A store need not be dehumanizing. Stores are not government agencies, airports, prisons, police stations, or border crossings. Their purpose is to sell stuff to people, stuff for necessity or pleasure or gratification or bragging rights. Stores depend on customers, who are free to shop wherever they please. It is never in a store's interest to leave a paying customer feeling angry or depressed or insulted.
If I were to go to a restaurant in which I was treated with the casual disregard that's typical of many corporate American stores, I would never return to that restaurant.
However, corporate American stores have a nasty habit of becoming near-monopolies, as they engorge themselves by buying up the competition and expanding into yet more and larger locations. Alternatives grow fewer.
It's getting hard to find a drug store that isn't a Walgreen's. Most of the time I depend on my grocery store for mouthwash and toothpaste and shaving cream and Kleenex and all that. I don't enter a Walgreen's unless my back is to the wall. Sometimes my back is to the wall. I always regret it. I have rarely encountered a Walgreen's that wasn't an ice machine with a grim survivalist atmosphere that mocks any notion of service to the customer. Just try to get out of here with your basic human dignity intact: that's the message of your average corner Walgreen's.
I note that another entrant in the faceless machine-store sweepstakes, BestBuy, might well be heading in the same general direction as CircuitCity or GoodGuys — two posthumous electronics outfits noted for bargains, vast selection, and rotten customer service. I didn't mourn the passing of CircuitCity or GoodGuys; neither did I weep over Virgin Records or Border's Books. They all earned their extinction and then some. When BestBuy's turn comes — and I suspect it will be within the next few years — it will not be missed.
Just yesterday I visited a high-end audio store so I might audition a Nova Phonomenon, a highly-regarded phonostage that I was considering for my main living room stereo. My current phonostage is adequate but woefully outclassed by my VPI turntable and its Grado Sonata cartridge. I called the store around noon and talked to the salesman about my interest. We arranged that I would come over about 1:30 — at which time he had set up a listening room for me with a turntable similar to my VPI and speakers that were in the same ballpark as my B&W 803D models. That way I could take the Phonomenon's measure with reasonable accuracy. Upon settling onto the couch and listening to Lorin Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra playing the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique on a well-engineered London LP, it was soon clear that the Nova would suit me to an audiophile T. After a bit more listening and chitchatting with the salesman, I ponied up the very reasonable $1000 retail price, with the unit due to arrive Tuesday-ish.
A $1000 purchase is chump change at a high-end audiophile store, but nonetheless I was treated with every courtesy and consideration. The Nova Phonomenon is available from several online stores, including big outfits like Audio Advisor and MusicDirect. But I chose to buy it from that nice high-end retail store; the price is the same no matter where, but more to the point I was helping to support a welcoming, warm, and very pleasant business establishment.
Saturday: $1000 at Music Lovers in San Francisco, money well spent (in my opinion) and the positive vibe that comes with supporting a valuable community. I had a lovely time.
Sunday: $113 at Walgreen's on Market and Sanchez, money spent without any human contact to speak of, only an indifferent bored clerk swooshing items past the laser scanner and waiting for me to pay via my debit card in the reader. The only interaction came from being treated like a desperate druggie for humbly attempting to buy a box of Sudafed. I had a lousy time.
There is no way that a drug store could, or should, offer the skilled customer service of a high-class audio emporium. But there has to be a happy medium. Or does there? I can't imagine that Walgreen's clerks have any need to worry about a lack of people skills. Walgreen's doesn't care what the cogs in the corporate machine think. What if bonafide people skills became a requirement, though? Not only for Walgreen's or BestBuy or Safeway or a laundry list full of other chain stores I could mention, but throughout American retail in general. It really doesn't take very much: just a few smiles, enough people on the sales floor to help the customers, and the fish-eye given to every modern-day "improvement" that emphasizes efficiency over humanity.
Maybe it's time to bring back the drug store ice cream fountain, staffed with big-hair ladies in starched white aprons who call you honey and dish up banana splits with a smile. Now, that would start a thaw in your average sub-arctic Walgreen's.