"A Barnes and Noble blunder?"


Oh, you know, on my second-to-last day at B&N yesterday, I discovered the company is starting up yet another something I think to be a bad idea. Now, at each and every transaction, they are making a big push to collect email addresses from their customers. The idea is that they can then spam them with promotions and such. They say it's a way to 'keep their customers updated." Sure, maybe, but who wants more spam? I know it's not a new practice to collect emails at a purchase, but usually it's done online.

First of all, if I'm a customer, I'm there to buy my book and continue on my way. Very few people, if any, say, "Yes, here's my email, spam me." Dumb idea. There's gotta be other ways to promote whatever stuff you want to promote than engage in a practice like this, at a store register. It just seems a little, well, disrespectful. I, personally, hate email spam. I'm sure most everyone else does as well. If the store must promote, offering a printed publication should be the way to go. At least I can just throw that away, and the only thing it clogs up is my waste basket.

Second, as an employee, it slows the transaction down immensely to have to ask each and every customer if they want to give the store their email address. You know 99.9% are going to decline.... So why bother? And if they do accept, it adds even more time to process the customer's transaction. No wonder there's a little resistance to this new procedure, not to mention all the other stupid ideas the big whigs think are so positive.

So, this outgoing employee (myself) has decided to rebel peacefully. I have refused to even ask customers about this email thing. If it costs the company a few email addresses, tough. It's my register to manage for eight hours. I maintain the counter space the way I like it. I process the money like I'm supposed to. I respect the customers and offer them a smile or a little bit of wit before they leave, and I sure as heck am going to make their transactions efficient and painless.

Big business politics, bah.... Who are these guys anyway? Have they EVER worked in my position lately? I think the decision makers should spend eight hours doing my job before deciding they know how I should be doing things. There's a big difference between enacting some new policy, and actually experiencing how it plays out.

Good-bye Barnes and Noble. Each day I work, I am going to miss you less and less.

Your sometimes opinionated, but happily blogging friend,
-Jon
posted by Jon at 11:59 AM  I   I  0 comments