So you as the company would hire seasonal work for one month, it cost a company a lot of money to hire someone, just to let them go. Question #2: can you identify chicks of multiple breeds in one tote? Everyone get real. I have been on my job for 10 years, do I know how to do every job in our warehouse, NO...... At there others that can do it yes. When you are expecting a boat load of chicks and are kept to the bare minume of employees there is nothing you can do but wing it. Give them a break they don't have to carry them at all. The more complaints they get the more likely they are not to carry them again.
Retailers regularly hire seasonal help for their busiest times of year. It's not always just to let them go, either -- I had several retail jobs during high school and college where I was hired seasonally but asked to stay after the busy months were past. The dollars spent training new employees usually repay themselves in terms of improved customer service and return business, and for an agricultural store like
TSC, it makes sense that springtime would be the time to hire extra help. Technically, I suppose, you could run a store with one manager and one cashier, but the resulting poor customer service would put them out of business pretty quickly. Most businesses realize that it's better, in the long run, to spend a few more payroll dollars and provide a positive customer experience. So why not hire people who already know something about the product? Plus, if you'll notice, I did suggest the alternative of having someone with some knowledge and experience come in for a store meeting and explain the basics to the regular employees. It's quite probable that a good "chicken person" would do that for free. Store meetings are routine anyway -- why not use one to prepare for the chicken onslaught?
By the way, I didn't "complain" to
TSC. I sent them a very positive email about how much I like their store and a few easily implementable suggestions, like making their breed info signs bigger on the tubs of chickens and including good pictures of the chicks of each breed, not just the adults. No, I probably couldn't tell the difference between two fluffy yellow chicks of different breeds, but the easy solution to that is not to put chicks of the same color in the same tub. They come labeled from the hatchery -- the store just has to keep them organized, and now that they're kept behind fences so customers can't mix them up, that should be a pretty simple job. I might not be able to tell a day-old White Leghorn from a Cornish Cross, but I can definitely tell either one of those from an Easter Egger! You might not know every job in your warehouse, but I bet you know YOUR job, and like you said, SOMEBODY in the warehouse knows how to do each of those others. The problem at our
TSC, at least, is that NOBODY knows anything about the chicks. They wouldn't even have to memorize anything -- they could have little flip books of cheat cards (like many other retail chains use) with pictures of the various breeds and basic information.
For what it's worth (and since many people point out that chick days is just a small part of
TSC's business), chicks aren't the only products that employees lack knowledge on, although they ARE the only products whose lives depend on it. My husband asked for hipwaders there one day, and the guy looked at him like he was crazy. And I called once to see if they had pine tar in stock -- after three bouts of "hold time" and associates who couldn't answer the question, I wound up with the manager, who still didn't know what I was talking about. I had to walk him through his own store over the phone and tell him which aisle to go down and what was around the pine tar on the shelf before he finally found it. My husband manages a store for a big office supply chain, and his store is probably four to six times the square footage of
TSC with three or four times as many SKUs, but he knows every inch of it and he trains his sales associates to know it, too. Even the minimum wage ones.
In answer to the next poster's question,
TSC is the only agricultural chain in our region. Not saying they're somehow worse than any of the others, but they're the only one we have any experience with. As far as why I still shop there, I do generally try to shop at our local feed and seed, but it's almost 20 miles away and
TSC is less than 2 miles from our house. They also carry a lot of products not available at the f&s. It's a great place to grab what I need in a crunch, but I know better than to go in asking for advice. I'm not so worried about MY experience there. I do worry a bit about how many first-time chicken owners at
TSC (or Southern States or Orschein's) assume they're getting good advice and don't need to look any further just because they're asking a store employee. But my goal is not to randomly criticize the company. I like
TSC. I just think they could create a better customer experience with improved employee training.
