“Service” = Sales = Suck

We live in a “service-based economy,” they say.  This sounds like a great idea, but the sad reality is that service equals sales.  Health insurance companies are not a services, they are businesses.  Their goal is to turn a profit, not to help you.

And so it was that I wasted half an hour yesterday at a cell phone store, trying to buy an accessory that they have in stock, but walked away empty-handed because I was not allowed to buy anything unless being directly helped by a sales representative, and the one sales rep spent 30 minutes serving two people.   

But it isn’t as if they didn’t have enough of a staff budget.  Just inside the door was Ad Girl.  I asked her to help me, but she said she couldn’t do anything but show me how I could watch T.V. on my phone, an utterly amazing, utterly useless feat.

I’m a strange shopper, I suppose.  I decide what I want before I walk in the door, I go in, buy it, and get out.  But require me to work through your sales staff, who will attempt to suggestively sell me things I don’t need, and I’m liable to take my business somewhere else.  Thanks for wasting my time.

Can you hear me now?