I was looking for a particular kind of cable to connect some antique (ie last millennium) computer equipment. I checked at a couple of computer shops and they all said to go to CD-r King. CD-r King is a no frills computer accessory shop. It doesn’t sell computers but sells lots of cheap no-name CDs, DVDs, memory sticks, mice, cables, earphones, etc. The place is always crowded and you have to take a number. There were 10 people ahead of me. Today I found out why it is always crowded.
The shop is no frills but also no touch. Everything is behind the counter or locked behind glass doors. It’s kind of hard to shop because you can’t quite see the items well enough to read the fine print. I had plenty of time though to spot the cable I was looking for. There were 7 employees visible. One was a bored cash register operator who had something to do only about once every 10 minutes. Two girls were selling to customers according to their number. The other four were milling around behind the counters maybe stocking shelves or assembling merchandise or something.
Since there wasn’t a lot to do in those 40 minutes I started watching the way the two sellers worked. They would call a number and get the plastic number from the person and go off and hang it on a hook. Then they would wander back and begin serving the person with that number. One guy was looking at CDs and earphones. After explaining what the various prices of CDs were he finally chose a brand. Then she obligingly got down 4 different kinds of earphones, opened up all the packages and patiently stood there waiting for him to try them on one by one and discuss it with his girlfriend. Finally he made up his mind so the girl reassembled the earphones all back into their original packing. Then she wrote on a sheet of paper the product code, the number, the price per unit, the number of units purchased. Then she rewrote all the same information onto a paper pad with a carbon copy. Then she added it up on a calculator, figured out the tax, and asked the guy to sign the receipt. Then she counted out 25 CDs and carefully wrapped them in plastic. Then she got some small stickers on which she wrote today’s date. She had to re-examine everything to find out how long the warranty was and then wrote that on the small sticker. She opened up the earphones again and put the small sticker on them and then reassembled the packaging and told the guy the warranty was 30 days. Then, she put all the things into a plastic bag and then finally accepted the guy’s money. Then she went back and woke up (just joking!) the cashier who then added it all up again, gave a receipt and change and the seller girl took it back to the customer and FINALLY was ready to attend to the next in line.
You would think a computer related chain of shops could come up with a little bit better system. I mean like scanners so the girl doesn’t have to handwrite everything several times? (And somebody in the back must be retyping and collating all that stuff for inventory and bookkeeping!) Like a go-fer so the girls don’t spend so much time wandering around the shop, finding keys for the glass cases, finding a stool to climb on to get three sets of headphones down and could maybe attend to a second customer while the first is waiting for the merchandise to appear?
The “r” in CD-r must stand for “retro”. And I guess they are Y2K compliant—still.
But I think I will buy my CDs elsewhere.
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