The American consumer has all but given up on the concept of customer service from retailers.  With no one to complain to, other than each other, shoppers lament that once upon a time experience, when a trip to the local supermarket, department store, discount outlet would be a pleasure, at least civilized.  All we ask for, when forking over our hard-earned dollars, are trained, knowledgeable, welcoming employees, including management; stocked shelves; secure and safe facilities; a clean establishment (restrooms definitely); and, if there are 20 cashier lines and only two cashiers, during an evening-after work rush, that’s just bad business; AND, decent, non-confrontational customer service. That’s not too much to ask for.

There is something to be said about location, location, location!

More often than not, it is the geographic location of a retail store that has much to do with a poor or good customer shopping experience.

The Broadway Crenshaw, Ca 1947 - Walmart Today. The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza was the first regional "shopping mall" on the West Coast, opened in November, 1947. The Broadway became Macys in May 1996 and closed Jan 1999. In the 1950s, the Broadway Crenshaw was wildly popular with TV star visits and promotions. (Vintage photo: Flickr, Julius Shulman)

Retailers in urban areas – more specifically, Black and Latino communities – are more often than not the worst offenders.  For the same product costs, retailers in urban centers get away with the worst customer service, while in suburban outlets, customers are treated with high care.

It seems the Walmart Crenshaw (Los Angeles) is a major offender of dishing out poor customer experience.

Lawrence Ross, of the Inglewood neighborhood in Los Angeles, had this to say in a fuming social media post about a recent Walmart Crenshaw shopping experience:

Dear Crenshaw Walmart:

I hate you. I hate you the same way I hate cruel despotic dictators and smashing my big toe with a Wily E. Coyote anvil. I hate that you used to be The Broadway (Capwells to my Northern Cal people). That was a good store. But you [Walmart] are not a good store.

I just wanted a microwave – a simple microwave. Yet, you had no baskets. I hate that you have the damn cart escalator system. I hate that the workers stand around talking about what is happening at their job, while not doing their job.

I hate that when I got my sole item, a microwave, to the counter, it took the clerk ten seconds to walk three feet to scan it. I hate that when I tried to cart my microwave to my car, the basket skidded to an abrupt halt, an invisible force causing me to crash my shin into the hard metal.

I hate that I had to lug that microwave, by hand, three hundred yards. I hate that when I put it down, opened my car door, stooped to pull the seat back, a man was standing over my microwave, ready to take it. “Just thought someone left it here, playa. My bad,” he said, running away.

In the name of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and Magic Johnson, I rebuke you, Crenshaw Walmart!

Ross lives 3,000 miles away from New York, but his recent Crenshaw Walmart experience could be the same for any shopper, let’s say, for example, at the Target Atlantic Terminal on the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, in Brooklyn.

Perhaps this is a good time for the powers at Walmart to take a good, hard look at the Crenshaw store and fix the problem.  Ross is not the only person to complain about this location.  His social media page was filled with comments following his post.  And, if that is not objective enough testimony, read these comments from shoppers at the Crenshaw store. Whew!

The microwave at the Crenshaw store is the same price as the microwave at the discount retailer’s tonier West Hills, Los Angles location.  The shopping experience should be the same too – civilized.

Lawrence Ross lives in Inglewood, California.  You can follow him @alpha1906 on Twitter.