Chilling at Sears

Yesterday I went to Sears to buy a new freezer. I knew exactly what I wanted -- an upright, frost-free, 13.7 cubic foot Frigidaire -- having previously scoped out the (fairly meager) possibilities not only at Sears but also at Lowe's, Home Depot, East Coast Appliance (which has THE MOST annoying commercial on HGTV, and that's saying a lot), and Dr. Johnny's. My chosen model was on sale at Sears, with free delivery, so I decided it was time.

Now, I've done a lot of appliance browsing at Sears. When I bought my house a couple of years ago, I knew I was going to need a refrigerator, washer, and dryer, and since I wasn't moving in till about a month after the closing, I had plenty of time to compare models and decide what I wanted. Last summer I was checking out water heaters after mine turned into a dead, leaking storage tank. More recently, I've been browsing for the freezer (the 5 cu ft box I have is just too small when you want to stock up on frozen dinners, which I do), as well as a dishwasher (I have one, but it's a bare-bones model with decidedly poorly designed racks, so I'm planning to replace it eventually), but I had put off actually buying the freezer due to my unfortunate 6-month spell of unemployment.

My point is, whenever I have set foot in the Sears large appliance department for purposes of information-gathering, I am immediately beset by helpful salespeople intent on explaining to me why I should buy a Kenmore instead of a Whirlpool, Maytag, or Frigidaire. Thanks, I would say, I'm just looking right now. Even so, it could be hard to make them go away. (I have to wonder why they even carry those other brands, since it seems like all they really want to sell is Kenmores.)

But yesterday I was no longer "just looking"; I was prepared to actually give them money (well, plastic, but that's good enough for Sears) in return for delivering a shiny new 13.7 cubic foot Frigidaire (frost-free!) to my garage, where I can fill it with Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice and Haagen-Daz. I headed sraight for the upright freezer section and found my model, then looked around for a salesperson. Ha.

Not one in sight. At least, not in sight of the freezer section. I hung around by the freezer I wanted for a couple of minutes, hoping someone would appear. Nope. So I started looking around other appliances, and finally spotted three people with staff lanyards clustered around one of the cash registers in the kitchen range section. Two of them seemed to be dealing with a customer, but the third, who seemed to be just hanging out to make conversation, finally couldn't ignore me any longer and asked if she could help me. "I want to buy a freezer," I said.

"Well," she said, "let me see if I can find someone who works that section. I don't work in freezers." Presumably, neither did the other two, since they were obviously the Kitchen Range Salespeople. (God knows what section the woman who asked if she could help me worked in.) She wandered off to the refrigerator section, where I now saw there were at least two more lanyard-wearers, and spoke to them, then came over near (but not in) the freezer section, where I had returned, and said someone would be with me shortly. She then retreated to the fringes of the refrigerator section (I guess she was not a Refrigerator Salesperson either; maybe she was Dishwashers? Hell, she could have belonged in Lawnmowers, for all I knew) until another women came out from behind the fridges and asked her where the customer was. The Not-Freezer Salesperson pointed me out to the Freezer Salesperson, who came over and asked if she could help me. "I want to buy a freezer," I said.

She asked me if I needed any information, or did I already know what I wanted; I pointed to the 13.7 cubic foot Frigidaire (frost-free!) and said I wanted that one. Mercifully, she did not try to sell me a Kenmore freezer instead. She just led me to a cash register. (Oddly, it was the cash register in the refrigerator section. Evidently the salespeople can cross appliance boundaries to write up a sale, but not to actually sell you anything located on the foreign turf.)

On the way to the cash register, she asked me if I would be charging it on my Sears credit card. No, I said. "You can get a 10% discount if you apply for a Sears credit card," she said. I briefly contemplated saying, "Oh, good -- I've been unemployed for six months and my unemployment is about to run out, so another credit card will really come in handy about now." But I fought down the urge and instead just smiled and said, "No, thanks." (Incidentally, had I asked for the credit card and gotten that 10% discount, I wouldn't have been able to get the free delivery, which was worth more.)

Eventually the sale got written and rung up, and the delivery date set. (Note to self: better clean up the garage tomorrow if I want to have any place for the delivery guy to actually put the freezer other than outside on the driveway. Or, I could just leave the car outside.) Mission accomplished.

So why does Sears have so many Appliance Salespeople hanging around holding clipboards and doing nothing in sections that they don't work in? Here's a novel concept: Have the Freezer Salesperson(s) hang around the freezer section, the Range Salesperson(s) hang around the range section, and so on, where they can actually write up sales for customers who know what they bloody want and are prepared to fork over money for it. Or how about this one: Declare all of them to be generic Major Appliance Salespersons who can help any customer who wants any major appliance in any section. And have them hang out where they can see any customer who comes in with that "I want to buy an [insert appliance of your choice here]" look in their eye.

I miss the old Sears Roebuck catalog.