Nightmare at Home Works on Elm Street

Actually, it was Home Works on Sukhumvit.

Just popped in for some essential DIY supplies. I won’t bore you with the details (ED: thank god), but it should have been an easy five minute excursion.

Of course I had to run the gauntlet of shop assistants. Home Works is a cavernous place. If you wrapped it up and gave it as a present to a giant, he would shake the package and the rattling would come mainly from the hundreds of shop assistants they employ, with only a small proportion of the rattle coming from the minimal amount of stock they hold, other than battered display models.

The job of the shop assistants is to alternate between picking their teeth whilst checking their mobile phones, and annoying customers. They are really good at the latter. Those not on tooth picking duty insist on saying “sawadee krap” to you. Once you have replied thirteen times in the paint section, this pleasantness wears rather thin. Having greeted you, their job is then to follow you. Closely.

If you don’t walk quickly and change direction often, they will form a following huddle which will pursue you round the shop, and they are really hard to shake off. If you pause to look at something, they will study your face intently, trying to guess your purchasing intentions. Sometimes they will point to other products, because that is what they saw real shop assistants doing in the training video. Except the real shop assistants would suggest alternative options of the same type, rather than pointing at a screwdriver when you are looking at an air extraction fan, as these dummies are wont to do.

Yesterday wasn’t too bad. Using my usual method of rapid acceleration, immediate braking and sudden direction changes, plus a look on my face that indicated I was about to ask a very difficult question in English; I managed to evade most of my pursuers. One stubborn young man was dispensed with by leading him into the electronics section and then asking if a randomly chosen rice cooker was available in pink. As he had picked up my tail in Home Lighting, I doubted he even knew what a rice cooker was, let alone the colour availability. Sure enough, he reluctantly left my side and headed off to find the answer, I expect he is still looking.

If you analyse the staffing at Homeworks you will arrive at the following statistics:

Working: 1% Assisting customers by picking teeth and checking mobile phone: 40% Harassing customers by following them around: 40% Standing in groups and talking about boyfriends: 12% Providing security by picking teeth and checking (stolen) mobile phone: 7% Sitting at the checkout: 1%

And no, that doesn’t equal 100%, but this is Home Works.

Given the above, this meant that only of two of the checkouts were in operation, while tooth-pickers stood around and watched; which meant queuing.

Finally, I arrive at the checkout with my basket of goodies, and all goes well until the clerk arrives at a couple of items which are well-packed in manufacturer’s bags, bar-coded, and clearly marked with the price on a big sticker next to the product. She does the swipe thing, but the beep of acceptance does not ring out. She tries again, nothing. She keys in the million digit code, nothing. Home Works, we have a problem.

At this point she suggests I stand aside while they sort it out, so that she can serve other customers. I have been caught like this before, nothing happens if you do that. So I refuse to move, which does not make the man behind me in the queue happy and I hear a muffled “merde!”. Small comfort for the day, I have upset a Frenchman.

A tooth-picker is reluctantly extracted from a corner and sent away to find a way of inputting the known price into the cash register. Days pass. He returns in triumph with a crumpled piece of paper upon which are scribbled the magic runes of product. They don’t do the job. He scuttles away and some form of fat supervisor arrives with a walkie-talkie and a scowl. She is not happy at having been disturbed but she also grabs one of the items and waddles away. We see the passing of an ice age. She returns with more numbers which also fail to elicit a beep. The tooth-picker is now lost with the one of the items, so now we are down to only one item, and no way of paying for it. Things are not looking good.

The age of the universe passes, although in reality it has been about twenty minutes, and there are now nine people involved. Three staring aimlessly at the bar codes that refuse to work, one cashier who hates me with a vengeance, a lost tooth-picker, two people who have been sent out into the wilderness to seek the lost tooth-picker and have also not returned, a grumbling Frenchmen who with typical Gallic stubborness has refused to join the lengthening alternative cashier queue, and me.

….time passes….

The tooth-picker is found and my two unchargeable items are transferred to the “customer service” (ha!) desk. Guess what they do? They try to read the bar code, they key in the runes, they key in the fat supervisor’s number, they express incredulity that none of this works having just been told by my ever-expanding retinue of useless wankers that it won’t.

Conversations, consultations, waving of hands. Finally, someone produces a “special order” form and tells me I have to fill in my name and my telephone number.

I tell them they have two items with a clearly marked price. I tell them I wish to pay that price and then leave their shop, never to return. I ask them why they are so useless that they cannot utilise their army of layabout assistants to make sure their limited supply of mainly crap products are correctly labelled, or at least have a procedure to quickly deal with those that aren’t, rather than wasting half my day and then telling me to fill in a sodding form to compensate for their utter incompetence.

Of course I don’t actually say that; they wouldn’t understand and I would just lose face. I just say “no”, walk out of the shop and go to Home Pro instead; leaving a basket of unpaid items including one electronic product for which I had already completed the warranty card in my name. Fill out a “special order” form for that, you useless fuckers.

Comments 🔗

2009-07-21 | Pete says

“essential DIY supplies” = blue plastic pipe, surely. Not electronic items.

2009-07-21 | rick says

So Spike, what is your theory for this behavior?

2009-07-21 | Camberley says

Sounds like you had a good day.

2009-07-21 | Spike says

“Essential DIY supplies” in this case included a fretsaw capable of making holes in a 3 cm. thick teak table. I’ve had the table a week, it’s time to “improve” it.

My theory is atrocious management and untrained workers.

It was a better day than being at work, and as usual I was thinking “this will make a good blog post”.

2009-07-21 | genuinej says

Not really that much different from B & Q or Homebase in the U.K., (except the language)

2009-07-21 | JB says

Spike great post. This is the same here in Isaan. This is the same at Big C in the electrical department. You want to just browse and are continually shown appliances you have no interest in buying. In the end you just leave as it is too unpleasent.

In the grocery section you are looking for something and cannot find a single attendant.

Then you notice a group huddled eating the ‘free taste testing’ item. When you ask them where the thing you are looking for is, you are met with some unpleasent look or remark.

I once had a girl virtually say when translated ’ the farang must be stupid if he can’t find the mustard sauce’ (they had rearranged the shelves and it moved)

I then asked her in Thai, “Did you always dream of being a dirty mouthed Big C worker growing up?” “Couldn’t you get a job in Pattaya at a beer bar becuase you look like the arse of a buffalo.”

After some more stern words in Thai and with her mouth agape and her friends mouths on the floor I then read her name off her badge and told her I was going to speak to the manager.

Of course I didn’t as the managers are absolute idiots and I wouldn’t waste my breath.

Thanks for sharing and very entertaining

2009-07-22 | Spike says

Reading your comment makes me wish I had made the effort to learn Thai. Tearing into someone in their own language when they don’t expect it must be sooo satisfying.

2009-07-22 | todd says

ahhh i feel your pain too :|

i have no idea how they get anything done here, 99% of them are useless.

i have encountered some good staff though, the staff at the coffee club are good and seem to actually know the food and drink quite well.

Australian company, Australian training i guess… (yeah i’m Aussie)…

2009-07-22 | Spike says

It’s the same as anywhere else in the world. With the right training and proper supervision, the Thais are as good as anyone, and more diligent than most.

The fact that many organisations are chaotic just adds to the fun!

2010-01-24 | Mattie says

Hello. Very interesting Blog. Not really what i have searched over Google, but thanks for the information.