The Fuss Stops Here

Everybody wants to have their voice heard, even if we sometimes need an intermediary for our voice to reach those who need to hear it. Unfortunately for grocery store customer Margaret Leigh, sometimes there’s a break in the communication chain that keeps our messages from their intended ears.

The inciting incident, as Leigh tells it, occurred last week during her routine trip to a Dayton Ohio Price Slicers grocery store location where she confronted a young clerk in the bread aisle over their merchandising practices.

“It’s so ridiculous,” tells Leigh. “The whole-grain bread I like is way up on the top shelf where I can hardly barely reach it. It’s just to push you to buy the store brand which is more easily accessible!”

“I told her that’s not true,” recalls grocery clerk Ryan Henning who was working that section at the time, “it's just how the bread gets shelved. I offered to pull one down for her, but I think she just wanted to rant about it.”

“It’s not fair!” says Leigh. “All the bread should be at the same level! Or better yet, add more grains to the store brand! Why even sell whole-grain bread and then skimp on the grains! What is this, half-grain bread!? Stupid!”

Henning tried to inform Leigh that those kind of changes weren’t in the purview of his job, but Henning apparently wasn’t the final target of Leigh’s suggestions.

“No!” Leigh reportedly shouted at the time of the incident. “Not you! Tell them at corporate to fix this!”

“I didn’t really know what to say,” says Henning. “I haven’t been working here that long and I didn’t think our corporate office would, you know, care. So I told her ‘Hey, I just work here, I don’t have any influence over corporate.”

“No, it’s fine,” replied Leigh. “Go get Terry. Terry talks to corporate for me all the time.”

We inquired with store management over who exactly Leigh was talking about and concluded that “Terry” was longtime stock supervisor Terrance Rowe who has been dealing with complaints and suggestions from Margaret Leigh for years.

“Oh, Terry always takes care of me,” says Leigh. “Every time I have an issue he always brings it right to the head office for me. He even delivers some of my comments in person when he attends the corporate meetings. Apparently this other one here doesn’t know how important it is for them to hear customer feedback in a timely manner.”

We investigated this claim as best we could without speaking to Terry Rowe directly as he wasn’t working at the time. We did however speak to several other clerks who indicated we should seek out store management as they didn’t know what we were even talking about and we were distracting them from their duties. Management was sadly and predictably just as unhelpful.

“I have no knowledge of anyone ever speaking directly to corporate about customer complaints,” says shift manager Darryl Fraser, “and I honestly don’t see what the point would be. Some of us only even have jobs to stop that kind of stuff from bothering the C-suite.”

“That’s simply not true,” says Leigh. “Terry’s done it for me dozens of times. Maybe he’s not reporting to the store managers, I don’t know, but he’s definitely got a direct line to the Slicers corporate office, I know it for a fact!”

As we still had a few hours before this mysterious Terry figure would clock in for his closing shift, we hired a private investigator to head to Price Slicer’s main headquarters in Dedham, Massachusetts where we unfortunately hit yet another dead end.

“Nobody in the Price Slicers office will admit to having any conversation with a stock clerk,” says the investigator we hired despite the steep fee he tacked on for the short notice. “The Customer Care department, who would supposedly handle such a thing, claims they’ve never had any direct communication with any store employees from Dayton or any other location. In fact, I’m told that nobody below the rank of District Manager has ever attended a meeting with executives for any reason, let alone relaying customer suggestions. Furthermore, visitor logs from the lobby reception desk show that nobody with the name Terrance or Terry Rowe has ever visited the site. Please check your email for an itemized bill of expenses incurred and remit payment as soon as possible.”

[Editor’s note: Please respond to emails from the accounting department regarding your request for reimbursement on this unapproved expense.]

Fearing that we may never get to the bottom of how exactly Margaret Leigh’s messages are getting to the corporate office despite nearly bankrupting this publication over it, we find a glimmer of hope in that Terry Rowe came in for his shift while we were waiting to hear back from our investigator.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Rowe when we cornered him in the produce department. “I’ve literally never spoken to corp–.”

Suddenly his eyes become wide with realization.

“Hold on a second,” he says. “Are you talking about Margaret Leigh!?”

Yes indeed, we inform him, we’ve learned that he’s been informing the corporate office of every complaint, comment, and suggestion Margaret has ever made to him and now we just need to know how he’s done it and to what end.

“Listen, man,” says Rowe, “I don’t know why she’d think that. She came up to me one day a while ago and was like ‘Wah wah wah, the apples aren’t red enough!’ or whatever it is she complains about and told me I should let corporate know she said so and I was like half-joking and half-sarcastic and said something like ‘Yeah, okay, I’ll tell them at my next meeting with the executive vice president of marketing’. Then she kept coming back and telling me to tell corporate this or that and it kind of became this running joke between us. At least, I thought she knew it was a joke….”

“No, that can’t be true,” says Leigh upon finding out she’s been shopping in a lie, “it wasn’t a joke, he was really telling corporate for me. And I never said make the apples redder, I said the red delicious shouldn’t be called that if they weren’t delicious!”

“Look, I’m sorry if I caused any trouble,” says Rowe, “but she doesn’t really think store employees can talk to corporate, does she? Is that really a thing customers think we can do?”

Apparently so.

“I really don’t understand how my suggestions could not have made it corporate,” says Leigh. “Take for instance when I told him to let them know they needed to hire more people. I mean, I guess I haven’t seen any more employees than usual, but maybe they’re just not here when I’m here. Or when I said they should re-organize the pasta aisle by noodle thickness and he said he’d let them know on that afternoon’s merchandising conference call. But now that I think about it, the pasta’s still organized the same as it’s ever been…. And those mealy, non-sweet apples with the skin that gets between your teeth and slices your gums like a razor….”

Yep, still falsely advertised as being “delicious”.

“Oh my lord,” says Leigh with a hand cupped over her gaping mouth to hide its gapingness. “He didn’t tell them a dang thing, not a word of it.”

“I’m sorry if Mrs. Leigh feels like I lied to her,” says Rowe, “but if i really had that kind of connection with corporate, why would I waste it to ask them about getting ‘better smelling floor cleaner’, reclassifying almond milk as ‘nut water’, or putting a note on her loyalty card account that she’s ‘a gold star customer’ in a ranking system we don’t even have!? Seriously, if I ever had that kind of in with corporate I’d probably use it to ask for a pay raise or, you know, a job at corporate!”

As the reality sets in that all her direly important messages to the Price Slicers head office have never actually left the Dayton store, Margaret Leigh handles the situation the only way she knows how: by yelling at a stock clerk.

“This is utterly preposterous!” she shouts after tracking down store worker Ryan Henning by the meat coolers. “He’s been lying to me. For years!”

“I understand you’re angry,” says Henning, “but again, I just work here, I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”

“Tell them!” shouts Leigh.

“I’m sorry?” Henning asks. “‘Tell them’?”

“Yes!” she replies. “Tell them at corporate that one of their employees is a lying skunk who only tells customers what they want to hear so they feel placated and leave him alone!”

“Um… yeah,” replies Henning, “sure. I’ll, uh, call the special hotline number they gave us for such a complaint and, um, they’ll handle it.”

“Good!” says Leigh with a nod. “Thank you! Glad to see someone here still understands customer service!”

With a huff, Margaret Leigh walks her cart over towards the checkout lanes and Henning goes about his job, probably making a mental note not to forget to call corporate later so that Terry Rowe can be properly and severely disciplined for his deceitful customer service practices.

Update:

We went back to the Dayton Price Slicers and found that not only is Terry Rowe still employed, but he has apparently not been disciplined at all. Management, who has no idea why they were expected to discipline Rowe, also state that Margaret Leigh is still a regular customer and has seemingly forgotten all about why she was so upset in the first place, almost as if venting to a lowly stock clerk made the incident drop right out of her brain.

We’ve re-hired our private investigator who informs us that the corporate office never received a phone call from Ryan Henning regarding Rowe’s behavior and denies that such a hotline even exists, reiterating that they are not in the habit of speaking to store employees, neither directly nor indirectly. We’ve retained their services so that they may investigate further and we will update with any new developments if any are uncovered.

[Editor’s note: PLEASE contact accounting IMMEDIATELY!]