Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Dead Robot walking.



You know .... a couple of months back I was pretty excited to see these in stores. Before I even begin know I still have not tried the technology. But there was one at CES.

I guess the main reason I haven't gone to see on in person yet is because in my opinion I think OSH is dead. It just doesn't know it yet. Maybe it takes years like Radio shack - but they have lost their way. And this is the reason I think this.

Over the summer my OSH completely remodeled. It was an older store, and I think this is always a good thing. I say gentrify the hell out of it. But the way they put the store back together was sort of nonsensical. For instance one day I went in looking for sandpaper. In the good old days there was one isle of sandpaper. No matter what kind of sandpaper you wanted - it was on that isle. Now... sandpaper is in three isles as I found out after searching down a clerk. Self I said - no wonder they now need robots. Really? I have to search three isles for whichever sandpaper I want? Ridiculous.

The other day I went in to get bark for the yard. We've been in a drought so I just left everything. Now that we've had a little rain and things are coming back to life I wanted to spruce things up. It wasn't in the logical place like the garden area. So again, I had to ask someone if they sold it anymore. At first the guy said it was "seasonal". In my head I was like - reeeealy? This is California. There are no seasons. Then he relented and took me to an area of the store I thought was for employees. Turns out they have bark and some lumber out there.

They used to have a really convenient drive through area for this kind of stuff. Mostly so the guys didn't have to haul heavy things more than a half dozen feet in any direction. And because you couldn't get this crap through the isles of the store. But my store decided to get rid of that and now the guys have to carry things through a roll up door and out to peoples cars or trucks. And that area is not manned at all. So by the time I'd paid for the bark and pulled around, they'd closed the doors. I had to call inside to get my bark. The employees are none to happy about this. It seems to me in California Bark would sell well any time of year, but they sure act like they don't want to sell it at all.

Now lets talk about the employees. OSH used to be one of the few stores that hired old timers that had retired from the trades. And they were actually pretty sharp. Now OSH has gotten rid of all these people in favor of other people with the skill set of baggers. None of them know where anything is. Which is kinda a pisser because when they remodeled the store they made so people couldn't find anything. I can assure you half of the people working at my store are there to tell people where to find things. And half of them don't even know themselves.

I'm not sure if all stores are run like this. But mine is grinding my nerves enough that I don't want to deal with that at another store. Not even to hunt down their robot. I hope he can get a job somewhere else when he gets laid off.

No comments:

Post a Comment