Monday, August 13, 2007

PSA: Wool Day

Hey y'all

Just thought I'd pass this along, it's from the Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum:

"August 18th -- Wool Day

11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Demonstrations and hands-on activities involving the processing of sheep's wool: washing, carding, dyeing, spinning, etc. "

Sounds interesting and a lot of fun! If I am in attendance it will have to be early (as in there at 11) as my cousin is getting hitched that afternoon :)

Update on the GVF: I've e-mailed the owner and let her know of our experiences. Not suprisingly, she's defensive. It's really too bad, because had she come back with "Oh my gosh, I am so sorry. Please come back and I'll make it up to you." I would have posted that and given her a second chance. Instead, so far it's been implied that we were disrespectful to her property, that I misread the events that took place, that she was merely concerned for the children and that other people had good experiences with her so the problem must be mine. Oh, and I am making her and her employee out to be "monsters."

(shakes head)

Yes. That's it. All of us suffered from some delusion or hallucination of poor customer service.

(Sigh)

This whole thing has made me really sad. Because when you work in retail/customer service, you are only as good as your reputation. And this woman seems to be completely oblivious to how she is hurting hers.
Typed and Edited At Least Twice by lulubelle at 2:50 p.m.

6 comments:

Alison said...

Well, I may have misread events, but I certainly didn't feel welcome at any time during the visit, and certainly was made to feel like a potential thief when I was told to bring my item to the cash now, despite the face that I was still actively browsing yarn--as in I was lifting up skeins, reading labels, and touching fibres. I certainly didn't look like I was done, but I guess they'd decided I was!

I am not surprised that she became defensive when you e-mailed her though. After all, it was her own customer service you were e-mailing her about, as well as that of another staff person.

I notice that she never defended the comments that you overhead. And she never defended the instance where I was rushed to the cash so I wouldn't steal anything. Those were just ignored in her replies to you. Guess they never happened, or weren't worth her time and energy to address!

3:12 p.m.
lulubelle said...

Alison...exactly.

3:14 p.m.
Cate said...

I honestly don't see how anything we did could in any way be construed as being disrespectful of her property. About the worst thing we did was walk on the grass... and seeing as there was no other way to get to the store, except over the grass, I can't see how they could expect us not to.

3:56 p.m.
lulubelle said...

I should clarify, she did not outright say we were disrespectful, but she made a point of saying "most people are very respectful of the fact that this is also my home." And that's a direct quote from her e-mail, which I take to interpret that we were not like most people.
I also took offense to her making a point of e-mailing to me that when Ariannah went she (Brenda) enjoyed how interested in the spinning process Ari's daughter was...but while we were there my son picked up a carder set and she practically yelled at him and snatched it out of his hands, accusing him of breaking it. Maybe it's just girls that she appreciates having an interest in wool and spinning?

4:01 p.m.
Alison said...

Lesley, isn't it interesting that Ariannah is mentioned in one of the responses to your e-mail? You certainly never mentioned Ariannah, as far as I can tell. the only place Ariannah was mentioned was a link from my blog. This means that the staff at GVF must have read my blog post. Now, if you were a business owner and somebody blogged about you this way, would you not have tried to comment in defense of your store, or at least to say "I'm sorry you feel that way, it wasn't our intention" or "if you have issues with my store, please bring them directly to my attention"?

7:20 p.m.
Anonymous said...

Boo! I will be away on the 18th. That sounds like so much fun.

I wouldn't sweat it too much, sounds like your experiences are not unique. I think people can dig their own holes quite well.

For instance, I'm a person who is developing an even more serious addiction to fibre...and if I can get my act together, my income can only go up. To spend on more fibre. Elsewhere.

(Deb B experienced a bad vibe too. Well, she's a 50 gram a day knitter. Pissing her off is like retail suicide.)

9:16 a.m.

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