I have gone back and taken another look at Bill's email to me. I must say that I was incorrect in my assumption that it was someone from JoAnn's. For that I owe JoAann's an apology. However, Bill sent me an email that was unsolicited, uncalled for and hostile to say the least. He has done nothing to correct my mistaken impression that he represented Joann Fabrics.We have all at sometime inadvertently sent a reply to sender, not to the group. This was not the case. I have blocked his name on my personal email. I do not need to receive anything like that again. I think Bill owes an apology to JoAnn Fabrics for continuing his masquerade that he may possibly have something to do with the company. Juno
Oh, but yeah, they do! It is so obvious that the clerks at my local Joann's hate their job so much that they take it out on the customers.
Oh, and there are a couple of reasons why the lines are so long at the store. The biggest one is that they don't hire enough help and the second one is that most of the clerks are either incompetent or just too busy yakking with each other to be bothered.
I'm going to go sew. I suggest you go soak your head.
Since Kate asks: I am a private individual with no employee connection to JoAnn Fab. Not the company; not the store manager.
You are dead wrong to say my message was in direct response to a complaint to JoAnn Fab. Juno has acknowledged this belatedly and said herself she owes JoAnn Fab an apology. (Progress is being made!)
But I do shop there and have occasionally observed ill treatment of clerks by those who live by the old saw you mentioned: "The customer is always right." That, of course, isn't true, and has been replaced by "The customer isn't always right, but she's always the customer". Loosely translated: "Don't plan on working happily in retail unless you're prepared to meet with a smile on your face if possible, the unreasonable demands of an occasional prima donna."
Like the ridiculous request Juno made of the clerk to "measure all the fabric in a bolt".
In my JoAnn's, clerks are there to maintain the stock and keep it orderly, point the way to fabrics, notions or patterns, and to measure, cut and price goods to be rung up. No problem would have occured had Juno simply had her friend's yardage cut FIRST, and then see if there was enough left on the bolt for her piece. And she'd have to know how big a piece her friend wanted; otherwise the total yardage on the bolt is a meaningless figure.
But Noooooooo, she makes a federal case out of it, knowing there are plenty of others around here who "love to HATE" the store who done her wrong.
I told her so privately, not wishing to add my private correspondence to a public group or to take her to task publically. Feelings, you know. But she did anyway, jumping at the conclusion that I speak for JoAnn Fab, so here we are..
I don't shy away from expressing myself publically, as you suggest. In that connection, I think that others, including yourself, should show restraint and disclipline and utilize private emails more often for topics of limited interest, rather than clutter up the NG with stuff like I'm responding to, or writing now, for that matter.
After all, nobody's mind is going to be changed about JoAnn/s Fabrics by others' stories of real or imagined slights.
Because nobody's that influential here, regardless of what they think. Kate, because I know you're not a sheep, if you venture to our shores you'll probably check out JoAnn's for yourself, too. I'm sure you'll be treated kindly when you do.
Yep, and it's really sad when it comes down to JoAnns or Walmart . Walmart is only 15 minutes away, JoAnns is roughly an hour away...*did* discover a local, small fabric shop, but they are somewhat expensive.....have to see how much gas is wasted going ot the city and see if I should just stay with the local shop
Larisa, former JoAnns employee, not above offering suggestions to others, and willing to asks how much is left on a bolt, regardless of how many people are in line - I did it when I worked there with no complaints, and this was before the days of the Telzons....where we had to write everything out by hand!!!
"w_boyce" wrote in message news:CvS8f.5277$ snipped-for-privacy@fe04.lga...
Since Bill has taken upon him self to be my conscience and my guide in this matter I feel I must respond directly to him. I did not hold up a line, there was no line. I was the only customer at the cutting table. Had there been others I would not have been so rude as to ask for anything. I would have walked away and said another day another fabric. I have never been rude or hostile to any clerk in any store. It is not my nature. I smile, speak in a friendly tone and I always treat people with repect. When they finish waiting on me I have never walked away without thanking them. I have spent far to many years dealing with the public to treat people any other way. Even when the clerk made a remark about me I did not show hostility. I did smile. Yes, I a did answer her rude comment but only after she made it and I did do it in a pleasant tone and a smile.I was angry, not only because her actions while dealing with my requests but because she waited until I went to pick out thread to make her remarks. Had she made them to my face, I would have answered her then and there and told her I would not trouble her again. I have over the past months been pleased with the service and politness of the clerks in that particular store and have said so on this form.. You had no right Bill, to comment on my actions in any way but on this form. My private email is my private email. It was as offensive to me as it would be if you picked up the phone and said the things you said. At least then I could have told you that I would not listen to you and hang up. When I posted your nasty reply I left your name off because I felt it would serve no purpose to put you name before the public. I have admitted my mistake to JoAnn Fabric and apologised for it. Why don't you show that you are man enough to admit you were wrong. Juno
It appeared to her to be in direct response to her email to JoAnn. Both she and I acknowledged that it was not when this came to light. It does not get round nor excuse your appalling rudeness to a fellow group member.
Not ridiculous at all: she and the fellow customer needed to know if there was enough fabric for them both to have what they needed BEFORE her's was cut, so that Juno could ensure that her cut did not leave the other lady short. What I fail to understand is why the remaining yardage was not on the bolt end, thus eliminating the need to measure the whole lot. This is standard stock control here in the UK.
No they are not: they are there first and foremost to serve the customer. Without that service, they and all the employees of the company would be unable to sell the goods and they would be out of work. Ultimately, the company is in business to make money. Their method is, like all retail businesses, by selling stuff to customers. If they do not serve the customer as he or she wishes to be served (with courtesy and cheerfully), then the customer will go elsewhere and the business will fail. If the employees who are in direct contact cannot do this at all times, then they need a different job.
Asking for the yardage before either of them had it cut is perfectly reasonable: what I find unreasonable is the assistants bad mannered response. And her continued attempt to CUT the fabric, when asked to do something else.
Your response to Juno's perfectly polite lament is more than a little ridiculous.
Why you needed to take her to task at all is without my understanding. What a rude and officious thing to do!
We here are ALL interested in fabric outlets where good service and good customer relations are important, and where the Stash Enhancement Experience is a pleasurable thing. Very few of us want to be treated as if our purchases were unimportant to the staff who are supposed to serve us. They do, in the end, pay the bills of those folk.
Why not? I shan't bother with JoAnnes on my visit to the USA, when there are other, much more pleasant shopping experiences to be had. I don't need to travel six thousand miles to be spoken to rudely. If I wanted that, I'd go back to teaching bolshi, bad mannered, inner city teenagers again!
You'd be surprised! Pick up the phone and ask how much business BL Joshi UK Ltd of Wembley have had in the past 4 years because of what I have said about their customer service, range of fabrics, and excellent prices here and on my Fabric List! And Lakeland Limited as well: I've been a joyful repeat customer of theirs for over 20 years, and never, in any branch, or over the phone to their Windermere base, had anything but exemplary service from them, no matter how awkward and trivial my request. They don't pay me for advertising. I'm just a very happy customer of both companies, ready and willing to pass on the good word to the rest of the world. Because no-one pays to be on my list, I get to say what I think. Over the years a number of companies have asked to be placed on that list: I have refused to list them. I list only those companies I have dealt with, and who meet my exacting standards of service, or who offer hard to find or unusual items.
Not only that, but there are a number of folk here who no longer shop at JoAnnes because of the way they and/or other list members have been treated by various different branches across the States.
See comment above. My titles were awarded by my sewing group friends, and I wear them with pride.
Since standard rolls of cloth are 25m, 50m, and 70m, depending on the type (curtain and bridal fabrics tend to be wider and come on longer rolls), and the company MUST know which roll length they ordered, and surely measured it when they put it on the bolt, this should be simplicity itself for the shop floor assistants to fill in the tag on the end of the bolt every time they cut a bit off. It only takes seconds and saves so much hassle and time...
One place I regularly buy from buys up over-stock from garment factories to sell on to the discerning sewists (wonderful place in Lancashire, called Croft Mill, about whom I am sure I have waxed lyrical before!). They have to check that the rolls that come in off the lorries match the inventory on the delivery note (sometimes this is 20 or more pages long!). They have a machine for measuring the rolls: you load the roll into the holder at one end, thread the selvage through the measuring thing and onto another roll at the other end, and then just wind the handle and it re-rolls the cloth and measures it in one! There are more modern versions with motors to turn the rolls. I've also seen things similar to this a place which sells curtain fabric, where to cover four
14 foot high windows with curtains and valances or swags, you might need
40 or more metres of fabric in one piece. I just watched as they rolled it onto a new cardboard tube for a customer, cut it across with powered scissors, and bagged it in poly tube, then loaded it up for her! Now here was I thinking the poor ole UK was behind the times again... ;D
Kate, in all my years of shopping for fabric, I've only ever seen this done once, in a city where I was visiting someone. I remember thinking at the time that it was so sensible, and wondering why everyone didn't do the same.
"Kate Dicey" wrote in message news:4364e32d$0$6499$ snipped-for-privacy@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net...
I do believe that I have neglected to state one thing. Not that it should matter. I did not bring a full bolt of fabric to the table. I brought one that was very thin. When I made my request the clerk said she thought there was enough left. I asked her to measure because I wanted to be sure there was enough for both of us. Until JoAnn's came to town the remaining amount was always written on the bolt. If a clerk was not sure she measured the remaining fabric for you. It's called customer service. Now a bar code is read, if the clerk chooses to do so, and your told what the bar code says. I have tried that method before and found it to be incorrect many times and have been left short. I didn't think it neccessary to go into a big long explanation. Please measure what's left. That's all I wanted to know. As far as cost is concerned there is no mental strain for anyone.The clerk scans the coupon and the price and come up with an answer. The entire process takes less than 1 second. I knew doing a quick calculation that it should be less with my coupon than the sale price, should I have to explain to anyone that my brain can approximate the cost. It is a routine request of customers in JoAnn's. I'm more upset with Bill's attitude that he has the right to email me privately, than I am with the clerk or her attitude. If I write a letter to the editor about something does anyone have the right to contact me at home to "chastise me." I think not. You answer in the same form you found the remarks. Bill is wrong, he knows he's wrong and he can't bring himself to say so. As for me, I shall continue on my way and put this behind me. It has reach it's saturation point for me. Juno
My 7th grade home ec teacher taught us one good thing -- how to estimate the fabric on a bolt. Two turns around the bolt is roughly one yard, so you can count the "rings" of fabric around the bolt and estimate its approximate length.
When I was a little girl, the local non-chain department store did list remaining yardage on the bolt, but I have never seen that done since.
They used to have those here, but every place I know of has gotten rid of them and now hand-measured them. I have no idea why, because I thought it was a great idea.
Both of you are missing the point: The other lady had the fabric in her basket prior to check-out when Juno spotted it and wound up with it first, ahead of her, by whatever means, at the measuring table, so she was "second" and was entitled to material only after the other lady's needs were satisfied. The question wasn't at all "is there enough material for both of them" as Kate says, but rather "is there enough material left for Juno after the first lady's needs are satisfied" The obvious solution was to cut the first lady's piece in answer to the clerk's question "How much do you want", and then for Juno to answer the clerk's same question about the remainder. What's wrong with this obvious and direct procedure? If it's faulty, let me know and I'll apologize to all.
The larger issue is one of unfairness to JoAnn fabrics by some in this NG as if they have a countrywide policy of hiring poor help. There is a knee-jerk reaction by some here when JoAnn's comes up to provide the needed tsk tsk to perceived slights, and "let me tell you my own story, now". leading to "can you top this" and "ain't it the truth" threads. Hence TSWLTH is institutionalized, and that's wrong.
Also about the clerks: Many in this NG are expert sewists and statistically, many more expert only in their own minds, human nature being what it is. I'm not expert at all, but have found dealing with local JoAnn clerks that there are some I can ask questions of and some who know less than I. Some here condemn clerks because they are not experts and can't answer questions they themselves could easily. This is a bum rap also; they're there to measure and cut fabric, not to offer expert advice, altough some can and do given the time and inclination. I've never found one who couldn't do that. My JoAnn's doesn't advertise giving advice, like Ace Hardware's "Helpful Hardware Man" or Lowe's building materials "You can do it, we can help". (My apologies to Great Britain if they don't know those stores; Marks & Spencer, maybe?)
Clerks in retail are an easy target and subject to bullying. We've all seen it. They have bad days also; I suggest cutting them some slack as they cut your material.
"Both of you are missing the point:" But that ISN'T the point. The other lady obviously was perfectly happy with the arrangement Juno suggested (I doubt Juno held a gun to her head) for whatever reason--the first possibility that comes to mind is that she (other lady) probably wanted to shop for quite a lot more fabric and wasn't ready to go to the cutting table. If Juno was ready to buy fabric and go on her way, what she suggested makes perfect sense, for both customers and for the store, which would have two sales instead of just one.
You don't have to tell us that retail clerks often have to put up with unreasonable customers. Guess what? Everyone who holds a job, of any kind, has to put up with a certain amount of aggravation. It comes with the territory. But Juno wasn't being unreasonable. Get over it.
The point of the fabric meter was that it snipped the fold so that you could tear the fabric off thread straight. When synthetics became popular, it was no longer possible to tell whether or not a fabric was tearable just by looking at it. Some fabrics do spectacularly bad things when you try to tear them, so it was either mark every bolt with whether or not it was tearable -- and expect fabric clerks to never, ever forget to read the label, and never ever to be tired enough to look at "don't tear" and see "tears fine" -- or cut every fabric, tearable or not.
For a while, clerks would cut with scissors where the snip started, but it's easier to stretch fabric out along marks on the table than to pull it through a meter, then lay it out for cutting and hunt for the snip that you mislaid during the shifting -- and hand measuring is less prone to error when measuring slick or stretchy fabrics.
My department at Hancock has it. I LOVE it. I use it for any/all measurements on ROT (Rolled on Tube) fabric. It keeps cuts straight and measurements accurate. And it's quicker and easier.
I had no plans to come back to this,but since Doreen has stated the situation with extreme clarity and accuracy I'll come back one more and I hope the last time. Doreen, I have found that some people can never get the point. Bill doesn't. He also doesn't understand and I will now put it in big screaming capital letters so he understands my main point to him. YOU DO NOT CARRY A PUBLIC DISCUSSION INTO A PRIVATE AREA, MY EMAIL!!!!NEVER!! Did you get that point, Bill Juno
Well, I enjoy shopping at JoAnn's when I am in Florida during the winter months, and I have never had a bad experience. Sometimes I have thought there were not enough clerks, but then, I am impatient half the time. I've been known to go to the empty table and measure a short bolt myself, to determine if there is enough material to be able to get what I want. Barbara in SC---there is not a JoAnn's close to me here in SC
I'm glad to hear there is a decent JoAnn's, even if it *is* short staffed. See, we don't knock stores for the sake of it: we tell it how it is for us, good and bad. Sometimes someone will put a slight dent in a place's rep if they have a poor experience, but it may be that one in a million times things go less than well with that store. Luckily for you, you seem to have found one of the few JoAnn's stores that works! Keep going there and telling them they are doing a good job, and with luck the word will spread.
I used to be a JoAnns employee - years ago, in fact it was my first job. We were *required* to measure fabric on a bolt, if that was requested of us, we were *required* to be knowledgeable about the fabrics, how to wash them, and whatnot, and we were *required* to be able to take, not POINT, but TAKE the customer to the section that they needed, be it for quilting fabrics, linings, notions, etc. We were also *required* to spend the time helping that customer and making suggestions.....like all things, it seems that expectations have dropped, and as a result, so has customer service.
I *expect* that, if I need help locating a fabric, the sales clerk will WALK WITH ME to the right area and HELP me locate what I need. I
*expect* that, when I ask for an opinion or suggestions, they will either offer some, or let me know that they are uncomfortable doing that. I *expect* that, when the nearest store is over an hour away and I call to verify that they have a fabric in stock, somebody has actually moved their lazy butts to go look.....what is wrong with that? Yes, it may seem like high expectations, but that is how I was trained to WORK at JoAnns, and that is how I expect to be treated as a customer in JoAnns....and now you see why I order most things online or go to the little local shop down the road.
Larisa
P.S. They *didn't* have the fabric that I requested and were belligerent about the entire issue, then took the fabric that they said they would hold for me and started putting it away....while 1 person was trying to correc the mistake of another....NEVER, unless there is no other option will I go to the JoAnn store..might order online from them, but never will I deal with in-store incompetence again
InspirePoint website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.