I recently had a horrible experience at this store and chose to leave without purchasing the items I picked out. It should have ended there, but as I was leaving and halfway up the sidewalk, the sales associate proceeded to follow me out of the store while yelling at me.
It started when I was ready to check out. I was one of the few customers in the store (which is normal, I'm surprised they are still in business as usually there are more employees than customers). I approached the counter, where the employee I mentioned earlier was having a conversation with the owner. Instead of acknowledging me and ringing me up promptly, they continued their conversation. The owner was giving the employee instructions on what all she needed to complete before closing. This irritated me, but I stood quiet and waited for them to finish up. When they were done, I set my items on the counter and the employee rang me up. Still no "how are you?", "did you find everything ok?". Not even a hello. When I handed her my gift card, she did not know how to process it. She called another employee over to help her...he didn't know how to process the gift card either. They both grumbled about how it was a "new system". (Side note: I purchased something from the same employee about 9 months ago with a gift card, and she didn't know how to process a gift card at that time either. Clearly there are training needs that have not been met- the owner may want to address this before the holiday season rolls around again.) I continued to wait for the 2 employees to figure it out. I finally became impatient, and pulled up their website on my phone to see if there was an option to pay with a gc if I made this purchase online. There was, so I asked her for my gift card back, said "I'm good", and walked out of the store. That's when I heard her yelling behind me "Ma'am, is it really that serious?!". When I turned around, she was outside of the store following me up the sidewalk, still yelling at me "is it really that serious?!". I should have just kept walking, but at this point I was embarrassed that someone was following and yelling at me in the middle of downtown Kannapolis, so I wanted to diffuse the situation. I tried to explain to her that I was not trying to make a scene- I was just not happy with my experience. She didn't allow me to speak, just kept talking over me. She waved her hands in my face and told me I had an attitude. I was in complete shock at her behavior as an employee and representative of the store, and told her I was going to leave a bad review, to which she rolled her eyes and said "ooooh I'm scared". The worst part- she was on the phone with the owner during this entire interaction (she had to call her for instructions on how to process the gift card).
I am still in complete disbelief that someone in customer service feels it's ok to conduct themselves that way, and to top it all off, the owner heard every bit of it. I went home and ordered my items directly from freefly.com. I will never give that store my business again and will urge my friends and family not to either. I've been in management for 8 years and I know what poor leadership and culture does to a business, and this situation was a perfect example of this read more