Ace Hardware marketing has successfully convinced me that they deliver better service than their big box competitors.
For years Ace has paid jovial John Madden to remind us that “helpful” is the position Ace chooses to occupy in the minds of consumers like me.
But the wheels came off this afternoon at Foothills Ace Hardware in Phoenix.
As I walked in, a customer was having a conversation with the salesman. The salesman was facing me. He saw me. But then he walked off with the other customer. He didn’t see fit to verbally acknowledge me or to let me know he would be returning in a minute.
So I went to ask the mournful looking girl at the checkout where I could find screwdrivers.
In The Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad describes company agent Kurtz as exhibiting “intense and hopeless despair.” This identical emotion was impeccably demonstrated by the checkout lady. She told me screwdrivers were on “the back wall.” She didn’t offer to take me to them. And they were not, in fact, on the back wall, but on the side wall.
I returned with my screwdriver, a Phillips head with a short shaft.
Four one dollar bills were laid down. The total was $3.02. I waited for her to take two pennies out of the change box on the counter. But the depths of her agony wouldn’t allow that, so I scooped out the two cents and asked for a dollar back.
With a practiced pout she shoved a dollar back at me. Again I waited, this time for a bag. No bag, so I asked for one, got it, and received another stunning pout.
I came home and successfully loosened what I figured might be a tempestuous screw. During the process my mind wandered and wondered.
I wondered…
- What kind of an organization is Ace Hardware? Had it not been me who walked into this unhelpful hardware experience, had it been Ace Hardware CEO Ray Griffith, what would have happened?
- Ace Hardware is a coop with independently owned and operated stores. So what level of recourse would Ray Griffith enjoy? Does he have to cajole store management to fire these slugs who obviously have no interest in working? Or can he lower the boom himself?
- Why is Foothills Ace Hardware hiring louts when so many talented, motivated people are out of work?
- Why should these sloths tear down a customer’s perceptions of other people who work at the store, good employees who are significantly more interested in taking care of customers?
- Why does Ace claim, in writing, that its “…store owners take pride in the time and effort they put into making their stores the most helpful hardware stores on the planet.”
The effort and the time might be there. But where are the systems, the business discipline and the pride to deliver on what, for me, turned out to be an empty marketing promise?
