Jay's Washington State Bike Store Experience

Submitted by Jay on Tue, 2006-05-02 00:00.

Tuesday May 2 - we finished our meetings in Kent Washington and went looking for a bike shop in Renton that I had been told about last year. We drove up and were immediately impressed with the building and signage. This store would have to qualify as one of the top-ten buildings dedicated to specialty bicycle retail in the country. From what I have seen it would also rank in the top ten to twenty such buildings in the world. We walked in and were blown away! We thought the exterior was great - the interior is an open area of at least three stories, with a huge rack of assembled bicycles suspended from the ceiling that could obviously be lowered and raised as needed. Bikes were on two tier racks along the walls and there were attractive accessory, clothing and shoe displays. The top tier brands in the leading categories were represented. We split up and waited with great anticipation for great shopping experiences ... and waited ... and waited! We waited over 15-minutes and were never acknowledged or approached. Finally I walked up to one of the three staff in the store who was entering what looked like QBP orders into the computer at the cash wrap, and asked to use the rest room. She looked up and said, " ... yes, you may" and pointed to the rest room door. I used the restroom, which was very clean and well organized, and walked past the cash wrap and said "...thank you" which was acknowledged with a glance and a nod of the head. When we slowly walked to the door, still full of hope that we would finally be acknowledge, we looked back at the sales associate who was still working at the cash wrap entering orders, another sales associate waiting on the only other shopper in the store, and the mechanic who was working in the service area - all of whom had a clear line of sight to us, as we exited there magnificent building and rated them as a lowly 2 ... all in all, a bitter-sweet way to end our trip.

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