My recent rant about the poor level of service in the retail sector really touched a nerve with my readers. We all have horror stories to relate and retailers just don’t seem to be listening. I’ve been writing Hudson’s Bay for years about their frustrating shortage of sales personnel without any acknowledgement of my concerns. Once I even typed a nice letter on real vellum paper, hand-inked my signature at the bottom and mailed it with an actual old-fashioned stamp to the President of Hudson’s Bay at 401 Bay Street in Toronto. I naively thought the novelty of a personal letter delivered by a human mail carrier might get his attention, but no response. Maybe a Strip-O-Gram would have been a better idea – more 19th century.

That changed this week however. I e-mailed the Manager of Square One’s Hudson’s Bay store with a link to my blog posting “    ” and received a response within two hours. The e-mail was personal, acknowledging and agreeing with my comments. He further described changes he has already made and assured me there are more coming. Holy smokers! I nearly fell off my old-lady easy chair. I also e-mailed Tiffany’s but no response so far. Guess I’ll have to take my millions of shopping dollars elsewhere. They’ll be sorry.

Sometimes I feel like the cartoon character grouchy old Maxine with her little dog at her feet. I’ve worked hard all my life and always gave more than asked for in every job I did. All I expect from others is delivery of basic job requirements and that’s not unreasonable.

Since many Boomer Broads are now retired we are in a position (time-wise) to make ourselves heard. The next time you receive poor service or an indifferent attitude, speak up or get your gnarly arthritic old fingers doing the walking across your keyboard. Collectively we can make a difference. And I don’t want to hear it’s not your job. I can’t do this on my own.