For the last five years, I've written a bazillion words about the state of shopping in Las Vegas, mostly for guidebooks, with the occasional website thrown in for good measure. Those assignments and this column, along with life in general, require a ton of browsing around.
Sometimes those travels lead to purchases, sometimes they don't. But each store leaves an impression that will likely be written about at some point.
Some of those impressions are fabulous: can't wait to go back to buy something, tell a friend about the store, write about it—whatever it takes to spread the word and keep the store afloat because a store by definition must sell to survive.
Sadly, some of those impressions are not so wonderful. In fact, many are down-right disappointing. The disappointments are not limited to any particular kind of store. We've all stood in line at the grocer and listened to check-out people ramble on with other employees about the best football picks, overtime pay or a scheduling conflict, without even an obligatory hello to the customer. We've all walked into boutiques where clerks can't be bothered to hang up the phone. And we've all spent 10 minutes alone in a shoe store waiting for help.
You can tell the difference between a sales person new to Vegas and one who has been here for years. The one with the most time under her belt knows the scraggiest-looking creature could come in, drop thousands in cash and never be seen again. Or she could become a regular. Either way, hurray for the sales person who was helpful and friendly.
For years, we've wondered about the dismal state of service in Las Vegas. Can't we start a campaign to improve things in our town? We live in a place where the customer is supposed to king; can't we send every shop a memo to remind them?
In the not-so-recent past when Las Vegas was still a consumer wasteland, our shops were blessed with captive customers and few choices. If you wanted it and it was available, chances were pretty good only one place sold it.
As Las Vegas continues to add more and more retail—new strip malls pop up daily, the District at Green Valley Ranch recently entered the fray, and the Forum Shops at Caesars, one of the most successful retail ventures in Vegas history, opens its third expansion for a total of 675,000 square feet—the competition gets pretty tough out there.
If you are in retail sales, it pays to be on your best behavior in more ways than one.
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