Sears Really IS the New Eaton's...

Beautiful afternoon in Toronto, so Sheena embarked on a brisk 30-some minute walk downtown to the Eaton Centre to do her share to stimulate the economy.



And to show that I'M NOT AFRAID TM. Yeah, whatever.


The good all purpose nylons that are a Sheenawear staple were 30% off at Sears, so grabbed a half-dozen and sauntered over to the desk that was ironically named "Service".

There were 3 clerks. A line up of about 8 people. Because it was only the accessories section, I assumed that turnaround time would be reasonably quick.

Two thoughts went through Sheena's mind, 10 minutes later. One was the annoyingly overused daffynition of ASS-U-ME and the other was about Paul Desmarais.

I rememeber last year chuckling with other online compadres about the 2005 Statememt by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives which rails against the falling productivity of Canadian workers and then reading the list of signatories which were mostly old men who'd had their fingers in political pies for years. But today made me think again.

Perhaps Sears had read that stunningly brilliant document and decided to transform their customer service kiosks into multi-tasking all purpose one stop transaction centres. Sales, Returns, Exchanges, Credit Card Applications! All with one stop!

Because that's the kind of stuff that was going on in front of me. Multi-minute transactions per person. Productivity must have been improved, because these customers didn't have to go to 3 different places to buy sunglasses, return some shoes and process a card application.

Yay Productivity. Hope it pays off for the company. Because it was the Bay who got my $30 bucks, after I got sick of waiting in line.