The woman in the sales office was aloof at best, exasperated with me at worst. I don't know if it was the appearance of the Groupon, my inquisitive 3-year-old who had to look in each doorway and examine each item, or the fact that she was totally aware that I was a new customer. Absolutely no niceties were offered, but she did glare at my son a lot. She never said anything like "Since you're new, do you have any questions? or "Since this is your first time shopping with us, let me explain a little bit about how this works." After paying for my cubic yard of mulch, I was sent into the loading area, where mountains of landscaping supplies are stored. The huge batches of different kinds of mulch are mostly unmarked, so I had to take a guess at where I was going, and only the driver of a delivery truck gave me any guidance when it turned out he was blocking my path to the mulch I needed. Finally, a guy in a small bulldozer-like truck drove up and took my loading slip. He collected a scooper full of mulch and unceremoniously dumped it near the back of my car. AND LEFT. WITHOUT A WORD. No, "Thank you." No, "You going to be OK with loading that into your car?" No, "Did you bring a shovel?" Not. One. Word. He ABANDONED me. At first I was so surprised I just stood there. Surely, I thought, he's going to get a shovel and he'll be back, right? Nope. I was ready to just leave the mulch there because there was no way for me to get it in my car, but an angel of mercy in the form of the semi driver offered me the use of his pitchfork and helped me get about a fifth of the mulch in my car. He was the one redeeming quality of the establishment, and he wasn't one of the people being paid to be nice to me. In using Groupon to advertise their business and bring in new customers, Tiffany's was metaphorically holding out their retail hand customers who are not landscaping professionals, people like me. But I was treated in a way that loudly communicated the exact opposite message: your paltry business is not worth our time and effort.
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