An open letter to Fry's Electronics

Fry's. Why don't you want my money?

I like Fry's Electronics for one simple reason. It is bursting at the seams with cool stuff. Computer parts, games, TVs, Candy...I am even strangely attracted to all the major appliances. I like to think I have the refrigerator thing covered with the one I keep all my food in. Still, it doesn't hurt to browse them at Fry's. Just in case there is any great break-throughs in refrigeration technology or whatever.

With a store this cool, so giant and so full of fun and awesome things, you would think they would hire people, good people, who will guide me through the miasma of merchandise I don't totally understand to the product I want like a Sherpa would guide me right into downtown Guatemala, or wherever Sherpa so diligently take people.

You would be wrong. A rodeo cowboy would have an easier time roping a berserker steer than roping help in this store. Don't get me wrong, there is help in this joint, or at least people who are ostensibly hired for this purpose...or at least this is my working theory. Perhaps they are hired to talk with each other, and play grab ass? I haven't actually seen a job description, maybe they have a Grab Ass Floor Chief? If this is the case, then that person is doing a magnificent job.

I always enjoy walking by the greeters who never greet me. I know if I ever have a store, I am going to hire two people to stand in the foyer and talk to each other. It just makes sense. I also like the two that stand and talk to each other by the exit. I always hate to interrupt them so they can make that ever so important hot pink mark on my sales receipt. I love when they look at my face as if to say "you are so important, I stopped my conversation for 2 seconds to put a hot pink mark on your receipt", then look back to the person they were talking to as they mark my receipt, never once looking at what I purchased. Someday I am going to sneak in a bag full of kittens just to see if anyone can quit talking long enough to notice that kittens aren't electronics. I like that they put pictures of people at the end of the each aisle who are supposed to tend to said aisle. I can never find those people, but if I ask someone else about an item on that aisle, they feign ignorance, and tell me I will need to find the caretaker of that aisle. I assume they exist. I also assume the ignorance is not feigned.

Fry's, why are you the only store that still hands out paper gift certificates? You are a technology store. You sell the very products that could help you. Why don't you heed your own call? Those roughens down at Home Depot have figured out the plastic gift card. Why do you still insist on paper? It is incomprehensible...and vexing.

I don't mean to impugn all Fry's employees everywhere. I did experience a solid, quality employee once. I would like to contact that good Fry's employee, and tell him to build an ark. Make it 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high. Make a window in the ark, and gather 2 of all the electronics in the store aboard the ark. Then, I am going to close the door of the ark myself, and it will rain for 40 days and 40 nights. I don't know much about electronics humping each other to reproduce, but I am sure after the rains stop, this will all work itself out.