A couple years ago, I broke up with my favorite culinary haven, Sur La Table. It took some time but after much thought and discussion, I decided to give them another chance with the caveat that I would never order online from them again after the drama with their ordering department. Things happen and when you deal with crappy customer service online, you tend to be a little scarred.

After I moved up to Philadelphia, Sur La Table and I made up.  The Marlton, New Jersey store is one of my favorites. It’s spacious, homey and the people there are phenomenal. One problem for me is that I live in Manayunk so a trip to Marlton isn’t done on a whim for me. If I happen to be in Cherry Hill, there are times I will mosey on over but to go there quickly for something is not the norm for me. Cooking Classes are definitely out of the question during the week as the 9to5 is near King of Prussia and I’m always busy here. Plus, the sous pug, Wiggy, doesn’t seem to be the fan of me being gone for that long in the evening.

I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was to hear about the Sur La Table opening in the King of Prussia Mall. King of Prussia’s Williams Sonoma has become a second home for me (hello – Brian there is one of the *most* helpful salespeople I know!) KOP also houses a Kitchen Kapers so normally if I’m looking for something, I can find it there. But, for the opportunity to actually shop at Sur La Table quickly during the day should I need something for my culinary experiments – umm.. HELLO! SO THERE!

Knowing how I am, I wasted no time in heading there for opening day. It was busy, as to be expected, but what shocked me was the quality of the sales force in the store. We had one person who was bragging in front of the store that he “made up the position” to stand outside handing out catalogs to passers-by (which, btw, he did not while I was watching him nor did I get offered one). There was a blonde chick who just was beyond rude to everyone and clearly didn’t know what the product lines were. (She actually exclaimed “Like oh my god, this thing is *soooooo* cute. What’s it for?” while holding a basting brush in some pastel color). I can’t begin to tell you how many sales associates they had on the floor who did not know where anything was and would purposefully avoid eye contact so as not to have to answer questions from the customers. I heard more about the blonde girl’s weekend adventures as she gossiped loudly to the other sales associates and *I* wound up helping a customer with their Le Creuset choice. Clearly the sales staff was too busy doing nothing.

I mustered that up to opening day jitters and was disappointed that the sales associates were not familiar with the products nor seemed to care. This is not the type of service you would ever get in Marlton – nor in Palm Beach. However, I have to be honest – in King of Prussia, crappy customer service appears to be the norm – even in Nordstrom. Sure, you get some great gems of salespeople (Joey C. in Nordstrom, Brian in Williams Sonoma, Orlando in Gucci) but more often than not, you have sales associates that tend to think they are above the typical sales staff because they work in “King of Prussia.” My response – when they work on 5th Avenue in NYC, then they can try to hit me with that attitude – until then, I will call them on their bull. So, I figured I’d give Sur La Table another shot after opening day because, well, opening day can be crazy.

Today, I went in there to get a yogurt maker because I was working on a piece about homemade yogurt. I resisted ordering it from Williams Sonoma as Sur La Table had it available and I didn’t have to wait for shipping.  Well, not for nothing, frankly I should have just listened to Brian and ordered it at Williams Sonoma.

The girl at Sur La Table was a sweet girl but very “deer in headlights”. It’s been two weeks almost and she didn’t know where anything was. OK – she’ll learn. For sake of this story, we’ll call her “Salesgirl A”. Salesgirl A went in the back twice to see where it was and it was nowhere to be found. They had two units in the store and apparently the whole Scooby Doo gang couldn’t locate a thing. So, while I wasted 25 minutes waiting around, I became more frustrated as the clock ticked. Y’all know how I detest wasting time.  I resolved that I was not going to buy the floor model. Call me crazy but there is a rash of food poisoning floating around town – hell even I caught it from a bad salad at Friendly’s on Ridge Pike -and who knows what could be on there after two weeks being handled.

Salesgirl A and her manager, Marge, went again to look for this elusive – not so small – box. However, when I have a sales associate next to her (we’ll call her “Ms. Excuses”) basically chastising her with an attitude of “that’s the wrong item. We don’t have a database. blah blah blah” I had half a mind to have a come to Jesus session with Ms. Excuses. Ms. Excuses proceeded to give excuses galore as to why things couldn’t be found as the construction was delayed for a few days, hindering the opening and organization. And then Ms. Excuses tried to say “well Rick might know where it is.” I had to smirk because that was one of the people helping Salesgirl A try to find it.

What really pissed me off is Ms. Excuses brought out the floor model in front of me again as if to say “well you could buy this one.” I was through – typical King of Prussia attitude of ‘you will take this because I told you to take it and deal with it because this is King of Prussia and we know better than you, the customer.’

OH. HELL. NO!

Listen, their manager, Marge, has a tough job – she has to deal with Ms. Excuses and that alone is more crap than the average person could deal with.  I did enjoy dealing with Marge because she was the one person who actually seemed to give a crap about the customers in the place. However, these recent experiences at a brand new store has me thinking. I broke up with Sur La Table for a reason – crappy customer service. When this happens in a BRAND NEW STORE, there is a problem.

I think that the time I wasted in Sur La Table would have been better spent at Neimans fondling some Louboutins. At least there, when they give me attitude, I give it right back – and I’m armed with a stiletto.

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