Niketown: A Model of Efficiency

For my wife’s birthday I recently bought her, among other things, a nice cold weather running shirt from Niketown. Unfortunately I bought it a size too small and ended up having to return it. Incidentally men, if you’re ever in doubt about which size to buy for the woman in your life, go with the smaller option. It’s much safer. “Really honey? You don’t wear a Petite? Well, you look petite to me.” This will earn you more brownie points than the actual purchase and will partially make up for saying that running on a treadmill is worse than giving birth. You know... if you were stupid enough to say something like that.

Allow me to state for the record that I love Nike. I’ve never bought a pair of their running shoes, but I probably own or have owned everything else they’ve ever made, including a lovely running skirt. So it gives me no joy to have to write a negative post about Niketown, which I sincerely wish was an actual town. It would be a town without fast food chains, the streets would be paved with that rubbery track compound and Gatorade would flow from your faucets.

Back to the story. I walked in to Niketown, the store not the imaginary place in my head, and I moseyed on over to the customer service desk. I explained my situation to the kindly old lady who looked eerily like my late Grandma, while she scanned the small shirt and checked my receipt. I was about to turn and walk off to grab the new shirt when Grandma informed me that someone else would get it and bring it to me. Perfect. That would save me from seeing something else on my way and exchanging my wife’s new shirt for that jacket I’ve been eyeing.

I stood to the side and waited. The women’s running shirts were located on the 2nd floor, which is a U-shaped floor that is open to the 1st floor below in what would be the middle of the U. This allowed me to actually see the rack where my wife’s shirt was residing. After waiting for a few minutes I turned to Grandma and told her that I remembered where the shirt was located, and would she like me to go and get it. No. Someone was already getting it. It occurred to me that perhaps someone was bringing one from the supply room instead of getting it off the rack. I figured that this would be a good thing as I often hear women say that they’d rather not wear things “off the rack.”

After some more waiting, Grandma asked me if anyone had brought the new shirt down yet. She asked me. I looked around at the empty counter and then sarcastically at my empty hands before answering in the negative. Grandma spoke into her walkie talkie and a new employee hurriedly came out of the Women’s Running department and down to the counter where I was patiently waiting. The employee looked at the shirt I had returned, frowned and then headed back upstairs where she began searching the racks for the shirt. After some flustered searching she found the shirt I had been awaiting, pulled it off the rack - sorry honey, the shirt is “off the rack” : ( - and then did something very curious. She walked past the stairs, over to the other side of the store and put the shirt into a giant glass tube that was apparently some kind of “merchandise elevator.” Seconds later the shirt disappeared into the ground and showed up in the giant glass tube that was 30 feet from the counter that I was waiting at. Nifty huh? Except that Grandma was now helping other customers and didn’t notice that the new shirt had been beamed down.

More waiting and then Grandma excused herself from the customer she was working with and spoke into her walkie talkie again. I could only make out her side of the conversation. “Are you bringing that shirt down?” - “Oh… but I’ve got A TON of other customers I’m helping, I was hoping that you could bring it to the register.” (Apparently, in Niketown the store, 2 customers equals A TON.)

The second employee emerged again from the Women’s Running department with a less than pleasant look on her face. She hurried down the stairs, went to the merchandise elevator, pulled out the shirt – the shirt that she had put in there only moments ago – and brought it to the counter. Before I could even thank her she dropped the shirt on the counter and then WENT BACK UPSTAIRS. At this point it had taken 20+ minutes for the new shirt to arrive at the counter. It would have taken me less than 30 seconds to go upstairs and grab it myself, but Niketown in their efforts to put the customer first decided to save me the hassle. Thanks Niketown. I actually think they just like using those cool merchandise elevators, I know I would if I were a Niketown employee, but alas I’m entirely too efficient to work there.

When I got the shirt back home and gave it to my wife, she removed it from the bag and out fell a 20% off coupon attached to the new receipt. Do you know when the 20% off coupon expired? Two hours from the time of issuance. Bravo Niketown, Bravo.