Yes Staples, as in Staples, Inc. the store.
Your Yorktown Avenue location in Huntington Beach, CA, the exact address being:
7131 Yorktown Ave., Huntington Beach, CA 92648 has much to learn about the words "CUSTOMER SERVICE".
It's sadly lacking at this location and after living in this area for over a year now and frequenting that store to purchase products, it's time to speak up and voice what many others choose not to.
The store is not a pleasant place to shop. When someone walks into a Staples in Arizona for example, the first thing you get is "Welcome to Staples! May I help you find something today?"
When you walk into this Staples you're lucky if a head raises up to acknowledge you're there in the first place. That's a warning sign. This email does not share a single experience. It's the same thing, over and over again for more than 1 year. It has not changed. It's time that you know there's an issue. I find it surprising that nobody else hasn't brought this up to your level. What does surprise me is that you've not acted on it because I know of more than 5 people who have mentioned this exact location to your corporate offices in the past year.
When you walk into a store and see 4-5 employees standing around and customers looking for help and not getting any, that's a warning sign.
When you go to a register row, find NO cashiers, customers waiting and you turn to a person in a Staples Uniform with a Staples Name tag on and they say in response to your request for a cashier that "I don't work for Staples", either we're on candid camera or this person is too lazy to be working in your store in ANY capacity.
If I were the CEO of Staples and I read this email posting, I'd take a serious look at things and start to see if there were perhaps holes in the system that as worked well at other stores for so long.
The other thing that took me by surprise today was that while all of this was taking place, the manager was literally standing there cracking jokes with some people and seeming to believe everything was just fine. Rather engage with this person and embarrass them in front of other customers I decided to take this issue to the Internet.
You see I was not the only person in the store. There was a total of 10 customers, there were more than enough employees, but they were too busy texting, talking with each other to be bothered with the little matter of customer service.
In their minds it's little. In my mind and others who spend money, who buy stock, who purchase products that keep your doors open, it's important. So perhaps you might want to look into things and see why your stock is trading around 15.00 a share when it could be trading substantially higher. Maybe more than just me is unhappy at the way your "Managers" are failing to take charge of your stores and operate them at STAPLES STANDARDS.
I hope this email is shocking. I hope it brings shame. I hope it makes some people angry. I hope it calls your managers into question and helps your management team figure out a solution to the problem.
Those of us who are the Boomers are tired of being treated like garbage by people who feel that they're too busy to perform customer service. We'd rather shop online at locations other than yours so that we don't have to deal with your people. You obviously don't want to deal with them because there's no fear in their eyes that there will be any repercussions surrounding an email such as this one.
I hope that's not the case. If it is, please let me know. I'll be happy to fly to your next shareholder's meeting drag out a megaphone and call for your board to take a vote of no confidence in you, have you tossed out on your backside and install me as the CEO. I guarantee you we'll take Customer Service up to a level that we had when I was at PIXAR working with and for Steve Jobs from 1991-1997. This type of lack-a-dasical attitude would not be stood for and replacements would be installed immediately to ensure our brand did not suffer.
What you do next is your choice. I intend on keeping this discussion alive on the web until such time as it's resolved.
Thanks for taking time to read this and best of luck in finding a solution. You might want to consult with the television show UNDERCOVER BOSS and see about having them do an episode using your stores and include this one in a visit where you get to work in the store undercover so you can see how screwed up things are.
Best regards,
Michael Murdock, CEO