Dan D.
Yelp
This store has a serious problem. Tonight, I was ambushed by an employee code named Frankie, who noticed my little cupcake chihuahua sitting in his carry-on bag in my shopping cart. Frankie, whom I mistook for one of the transients who frequently hang out in front of the store, intercepted me by the yogurt section and was all in my face demanding that my little dog had to be covered and zipped. When I decided to walk away from the situation and proceeded towards the self checkout, he followed me like a hockey defender and blocked me again, stressing with evil spark in his eyes, that the dog must be covered and zipped. I realized he wasn't a transient and belonged to the WFM circus. So I told him OK, I'll pay for my groceries and I'm outa here. But the hockey defender was already fully energized and jumped in front of my shopping cart, grabbed it and said victoriously that I am being refused the service and can't buy anything in his store. I saw no tag on his jersey so I began to think again he was a transient and called a nearby female employee for help. He claimed he worked at the store so I asked him to call a manager. "I am the manager!", he snapped back." Nooo, I thought, I never saw you here before, and I live here. "OK, so I zip the puppy up and I can pay for my stuff?", I asked. Both him and his female coworker said yes. I zipped the bag and asked him for his business card. He said he didn't have any. I asked him to write his name on a piece of paper. He said yes. He hands the piece of paper back to me and it says "Frankie". I asked for his full name, not his call sign, as my call sign was Boggey back in the Air Force. Now you feel where it's going, right? He said he couldn't give me his full name. Allegedly, it's confidential by the strict company policy. Great! So I said: "look Frankie, I'll talk to the management about all this, we'll talk again." And he shreaks "it's a threat! You are refused the service, you can't buy anything!" The female employee looked like she needed to choose sides pretty quickly, her head spinning. "So what do you want, Frankie, if I take the dog out and put him in a car, can I finish this transaction?" Getting a chance to get out of a gambit, he reviews my offer, pauses and says yes. OK then. Putting the bag on my shoulder I asked him: "By the way, do you have any no dogs signs around here?" "Yes we have", he said. "Good, so when I come back, you'll show it to me, OK?" "I will", he responded.
And so it all happened. I paid for my groceries and asked the female employee to call Frankie back to show me the signs. We stepped outside, she as a silent witness, pretending to reposition shopping carts. Frankie pointed at a bleached out sign on the glass doors, holding his index finger in the air, but to no avail. It was unreadable. Plastic letters lost color in years of Arizona sun and it was dark outside. No light was highlighting any warnings. I saw no picture of a wolf. The silence was deafening.
I thought it was the best time for closing arguments, your honor, so I said: Look, Frankie, you just had a bad day so you needed to win at least one battle before your shift is over, right? I live here, and nobody ever did what you did today. So next time I come here you make sure you smile at me and are nice to people. OK? And he said .... OK.
I got in my car and told my little dog Max that everything was all right, and that I would always be on his side. And I also told him that I suspect Bezos told his employees that if a customer wants to talk to a manager, they say they are the manager, to block any complaint right there, in a confusion called team, where we are all managers and nothing can ever be solved. And Max was looking at me as if saying: "Are you people for real?"
