EDITOR – I live in New Germany and on Sunday I went to Clicks to look for ear plugs. The first assistant took me to the ear-phone aisle. I explained that I wanted ear plugs. I then found assistant number two who took me to the sound-system aisle and again I explained what I wanted.
Assistant three didn’t know what I was talking about and shouted to her colleague, assistant four, in an aisle far away, who shouted something back in Zulu, but which didn’t lead me to ear plugs. I left assistant number three and found another one, assistant four, who also shouted to another assistant obviously asking for help.
By this time I was losing patience, but thought let me try a last time, so I found assistant five (not counting the unseen assistant six) and said I was looking for ear plugs to use when swimming and even demonstrated swimming and pointing to my ears – unfortunately this assistant looked vaguely at me in silence.
By now I was absolutely exasperated and went to the front desk and asked for the manager. A woman came forward – whether she was the manager I don’t know – and I explained to her that I had been through every employee in Clicks looking for ear plugs, but unsuccessfully. Her answer was, “Wait, let me get someone who works here to help you.” I rest my case.
Dumbfounded
New Germany
Susann Caminada, the Clicks spokesman, responded to the incident:
We have investigated the complaint and apologise for the poor service. We are addressing this with the staff at the store concerned.
Our store manager has contacted the complainant to apologise for the incident. The ear plugs she wanted are discontinued and we think this was not explained properly to her at the time. We have sourced a pair of ear plugs for her and she will collect the stock from the store at the weekend. She has accepted our apology and the complaint has been resolved.
