Jan 08, 2009 08:31 PM
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(Updated Jan 08, 2009 08:33 PM)
"PATIENCE IS A GREAT VIRTUE"- This was told to me by an old man at a railway reservation counter when I was a young kid many years back when I started fidgeting awaiting my turn! Somehow the memory of it has stuck and I have consciously tried to follow it so far faithfully passing it on to my kids as well!
However nearly thirty years after I received the words of wisdom from the unknown stranger, I have thanks to SMART SUPERMARKET in Sultanpalaya, Bangalore very quickly come to the conclusion that patience sometimes can become a BIG LIABILITY !!!!
The shop is spacious, there is space to move around and I fairly well stocked. Prices are competitive.
However the BIG ISSUE relates to billing. For a fairly big store there are just TWO billing counters , one of which is unattended half the time. The counters are manned by staff who are indifferent and pathetically slow. In addition the shop sells vegetables but the weighing scale is only in one of the two counters.
So every two minutes the billing is interrupted by either the staff at the other counter trying to weigh a customers order or a customer barging in to weigh it before going to the billing stage!
Even more irritating, the card swiping machine is not in the counter but inside their office. Last Sunday I joined the que with just one person ahead who paid by Credit Card. It took 15 minutes (not joking ) for the staff to complete the transaction. Needless to say the counter was unattended while the staff went inside the office to swipe the card!!
With just two counters you can forget any talk of an EXPRESS counter. And when the crowd is less sometimes there is no one at the counter for minutes at a stretch.
This store basically appears to cater to bored housewives from the neighboring apartments catching up on the days gossip and has no issues wasting anything up to half an hour at the billing counter! Unfortunately SMART has not realized that not everyone has that much of time to spare .
Needles to say I now walk nearly half a km further to a local grocery store who while not giving any discounts does a great job in billing with everything bar coded . Also with their limited discount policy they are able to stocks multiple brands of every grocery unlike most super markets.
Shame on you SMART!!!!
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