My son really likes Reames chicken noodle soup. There's a kit in the frozen section that we get when we go to my in-laws. But around here neither of the stores (Wal-Mart or Dillons) carries it. They carry the Reames egg noodles, but no the soup kit.
So I go to our Wal-Mart neighborhood market today and I go to customer service with the empty box and ask if they can get this, since after all they get the egg noodles. The first person had no idea how to help. The second person came and scanned the bar code, and then looked at his tablet for the next five minutes, with the same expression linguists use when they were trying to interpret sanskrit for the first time.
Finally, he tells me that they don't carry it. I know, I said. That's why i'm asking if you can get it. He tells me that his warehouse has no record of this product. Remember, this is WAL-MART we are talking about, the place that has likely the most extensive retail list of any store in the world. I tell him that stores only a few hours away have these things, and the company that makes it makes other products that this very store sells. But he continues to tell me that the warehouse has no record of it. Finally I say thank you and go on and do my shopping for the day.
I'm not one that likes talking to people with companies or spending time on phones trying to explain what I need. But surely, somewhere in the world of Wal-Mart, a person will take initiative to call somebody who might know how to get what a customer wants? just one phone call, "Hey, can we get this product that a customer has requested?"
I love America, but this is another sign of its increasingly stupidity.
