I won't be coming here again. The employees who work there have no idea what they're doing. I know what it's like - I've done customer service most of my life. The issue is how incompetent and unbelievably rude the cashiers are at this store, and how little humility is displayed. One employee rung up one of my items wrong - she had just checked the price and for reasons only she knows, two seconds later the price was higher. I asked her why the price was higher than two seconds ago and she just said "It's $1.79". I say, "Okay, but two seconds ago you told me it was $1.09. Why is it higher now?" "It is $1.79". "Okay, two seconds ago you told me $1.09, why is it $1.79 now?" "It's $1.79" No "wait, let me check it out", no "I'm sorry let me fix this", no "I'll call my supervisor to see what's going on". No eye contact. Nothing. None of that. Just grim-faced lack of customer service. And why is it that when something's wrong on her end, the grim-faced attitude is that I'M the one who screwed up?
I decided not to buy the item. As I walked out of the store, I looked at the package price again. It did state the price: $1.09!!! So I went back and the other cashier helps me. I asked her to ring up the item and told her I already bought the soda I was holding. She rings in the correct price of the item in question AND charges me for the soda. Here we go again: I already paid for the soda, your total is blah. No, I already paid for the soda, okay your total is blah. I already bought this soda, your total is blah. I already paid, ohhhhhhhhhh you paid already. Yes, I already paid. But here's the part that sealed the deal of my never returning to this place: While I'm getting my money out the cashier asks the other cashier if I had already paid, right in front of me, in Spanish. So you think I don't understand Spanish? That behavior in front of a customer is rude IN ANY LANGUAGE. After her equally charming coworker tells her "Si", I looked up and said, "Yeah, I paid for it", with the implication that I understood what they were saying and that it was fucking rude.
If someone is working in customer service, dealing with the general public, they have to be able to understand and speak the English language. You don't have to be a scholar, but you do have to be able to do more than scan something and read numbers. It's not the companies themselves that do hiring for those types of jobs - it's store or district managers. And a lot of nepotism goes on: people recommend brothers, sisters, in-laws, etc. Fine, that stuff happens. But in order to work with the public, there must to be a certain level of English competency such that a customer can ask a reasonable question, know they'll be understood, and be given a reasonable answer. That level of English competency is sorely lacking at the Corte Madera Chevron. read more