It’s been six months since Macy’s virtually eliminated paper shopping bags – you know, the ones sturdy enough to hold several purchases and tall enough to contain a gift box. That’s right, welcome to the holidays at Macy’s, where you have to carry your box separately because it doesn’t fit into the flimsy plastic bag – that is, if you can get a gift box. Half the time, they don’t seem to have boxes behind the register (did the holiday just sneak up on them?) and I’ve yet to encounter a sales associate who offered to locate one for me. I went out of my way to the customer service desk to get a box – only to discover when I got home that they had given me one too small.
And why do Macy’s employees seem surprised that shoppers want gift receipts? Most associates don’t seem ask, and when you tell them you need one, they get all hot and bothered and have to void the transaction and start over. 1. Why not set up the registers to automatically spit out a gift receipt, like they do at Target, or at least make it possible to add one at the end of the transaction. 2. If that really is not possible, why not train associates to ask before ringing if the customer wants a gift receipt.
After all, we’re trying to follow the rules.
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