My jaw just literally hit the floor when I read the last comment on the Hurricane Kohl's post:
"Sure, Kohl's made a statement response to the blog, but we as employees felt it was necessary to step in as well."
Of course, it was followed by a link to the new Dallas Kohl's Employee blog, created solely to respond to the photos posted on this blog a few days after last Christmas. This story has been the gift that keeps on giving, and this post gives us a pretty good peek behind the Kohl's curtain. This employee cites the following problems:
"1. Store Management
2. Lack of staff
3. Customer demographic"
Sounds pretty much as we suspected, but he/she goes on...
"Yep, those photos look pretty accurate to me! On the morning of January
18, 2007, the regional manager came into the store and boy was she
pissed! I wasn't there to see her, but the instructions she left for
management was to have every department, recovery and freight employee
in the store in the Men's department cleaning."
It's interesting to me that it took that long for action to happen. The message on my voice mail from the VP of PR was left on Monday, January 8th, and only 10 days later did someone actually go and clean the place up.
Obviously, the employee echoed many of the comments left on the original two Kohl's posts about how this was not only a reflection on Kohl's, but also the customers trashing the store.
"Your average Kohl's customer shops the store with Wal-Mart money and
expects Barney's service. They take several pieces of clothing into the
dressing rooms, try them all on and then leave them there. Okay, this
happens. But then you all expect us, the employees, to clean it all up
because "that's your job," you say. Right? Well, as long as we're
having to go behind each and every PIG that shops, we aren't able to
assist you on the sales floor, aren't able to get more product onto the floor (replenishment), and we aren't able to keep the sales floor in
pristine condition."
Although, having waited tables and bartended throughout college, I understand that some customers are just a pain in the ass, that doesn't excuse the store for not staffing to a high enough level to mask these problem customers.
"Now with that said, there's the management team. Oh boy. In a nutshell,
they're pretty much good for nothing. They leave everything up to the
department supervisors and part-time associates while they sit in the
office eating donuts and taking lunch breaks. They are so concerned
with their vacation time and what they're doing over the weekend, that
we're left to figure things out on our own."
Again, many commenters caught on to the issue that it's probably as much of a local management issue as anything else. I don't think anybody will be too surprised there.
Sounds just about like we suspected all along. My only hope is that if Kohl's does find out who this employee is, they don't reprimand, but promote. It sounds like they have a better idea of what the problems are than the management or corporate leadership. Either way, it's a clear indication of the changing world we live in.
Check out the rest of the post here. It's full of great stuff...
At we point do we stop trying new things? 
