I agree. And it's not just those two.
after owning my town's insurance agency for 20 years, where I got in at the literal crack of dawn, I owned a retail store for five years.
had seven employees in my electronics business and thankfully got lucky with employees. Most were hobbyists of some type, one
was retired and loved electronics, so I had guys working for me who were enthusiastic about what we had.
We were not a normal Radio Shack and that's why they liked it. I was only half Tandy.
but every day we were open the front door was unlocked five minutes before 9am. Sometimes to a small line of folks on a weekend before Christmas. Opening a few minutes early was strongly appreciated. We opened on time, we priced products fairly, we were knowledgeable about most of what we sold (no I'm not exactly sure what a triac does...) and we fixed anything we sold. The shop was remarkably successful. Unfortunately my marriage wasn't and post divorce it just wasn't as much fun. Plus I needed out of those closed in walls, needed some air.
good business is just the basics. If you work there and deal with customers, you have to know the products. There's never downtime, you can at least be studying something, reading the label on the back of the box, educating yourself, making sure you know where items are.
And stay off your phone.
where are the motivated energetic employees?
self checkout can be a huge annoyance because too often the scan doesn't work.
my pet peeve is tractor supply. Still looking for some smarter folks there. Thankfully most have items in the same places at every store.
so you know you have to go to the back wall for batteries and the right front for clothing, front left for chemicals, center aisle for geegaws, back left for motor oil
Harbor freight is a good one; they have a system, and I think their employees know where most things are.
do they know how that mini lathe works? no
