The Case
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BJ's Wholesale Club
Corporate Offices
ATTN: Customer Relations
PO Box 9601
Natick, MA 01760

RE: Visit by Member #xxx-x-xxxx-xxx

To Whom it May Concern,

I am writing to inform you of a poor experience I had shopping at your
(Removed), MA store on the evening of Saturday, September 21.

As I approached the check-out line, I was appalled to be confronted with
lines that stretched well beyond the start of the food aisles, and only
four check-out lanes open -- two of which were express lanes for 8 items or
less. I entered the check-out line at 8:10 that evening and did not get to
leave your store until 8:45. Translated, it took me 35 minutes just to get
through the check out line.

I noticed that one of the managers on-duty, [bleep], seemed rather
harried and was being thrown in many directions. I don't know if the jam of
customers was his fault, but I was extremely disappointed to not see him
adding additional registers until 8:40 that evening -- much too late to be
of any service to me, or any of your other customers who were subjected to
the same unacceptable wait time. In fact, at one point, three out of the
four cash registers that were open had their lights flashing, further
stalling and worsening the problem. As a side note, several people simply
abandoned their shopping carts and left them near the lines, further
confusing the situation.

Perhaps it would be appropriate to empower your employees to make
decisions, to prevent further slow-downs, particularly when the situation
is so dire, or to have additional supervisors on duty to address the number
of problems.

I understand that sometimes events happen beyond a supervisor's control,
and that may have been the case in this instance. However, the fact that it
took over 30 minutes for management to take action to improve this
situation is utterly disappointing to say the least.

I am bringing this situation to your attention in the hopes that action can
be taken to insure that your other members are not subjected to the same
sort of absurd wait times again.

Thank you very much for your time.

The Advocate's Analysis

This is, without a doubt, a bad situation gone wildly out of control.

Retail establishments, be they your typical department store or a wholesale
club like BJ's, spend a tremendous amount of money on marketing and
promotion, both within the store and outside of the store, to give
consumers a positive attitude and reaction to their brand. Nonetheless,
aside from all of this marketing and in-store displays and product samples,
the impression that will stay with many consumers is their last, which is
when you finally purchase something and check-out with your
merchandise. In this case, BJ's utterly failed at this critical crossroads.

What alienates me the most is that this chaos was allowed to prevail for
over half an hour before management took any action to curtail it .... that
is quite simply unacceptable. If they were able to staff additional
registers at 8:40PM, why were they not able to do so 30 or 45 minutes
earlier? Certainly no one is arriving to begin their shift at that time.

I am nothing short of amazed that more customers didn't just leave without
making any purchases; I'm also very curious to know how many will be quick
to return to BJ's and whether or not their bargains are really worth this
hassle ... I, for one, doubt it.

To quote from their web site, if this is indeed "the shopping phenomenon of
the century", God help us all.