When companies stop caring

All it takes is a trip to a Pick n Pay hypermarket to see what happens when a company doesn't care about its customers. I stupidly went to Pick n Pay on Saturday and these points will sum up my experience:

1. I asked 3 separate staff members for help and all 3 told me it wasn't their department
2. I eventually found the correct staff member lingering in the corner of the store having a chat with someone on sms
3. After waiting for him to eventually acknowledge me, I asked where to find the product I was looking for and he mumbled out an aisle number and returned his focus to his cell phone
4. Still not being able to find the product I approached a group of 7 staff members having a casual chat and wasn't surprised to hear that it wasn't their department (even though they were standing in that department)
5. Only half a dozen tills were open (out of a possible 50) so the queues were massive.
6. When I eventually got to the till the teller was so engrossed in a conversation with a colleague that she didn't greet me, look at me, or thank me for shopping there.

I am now going to go out of my way to never shop at Pick n Pay ever again, and I hope I'm not the only one. It is truely astounding that a company can treat their customers so poorly and with such disregard.

The upside is that there is an opportunity for someone to crush them by opening up a competing store. I do love how their tag-line is such a blatant lie! An honest marketer would have gone with "We'll show you our backside"