We just read about a high school class of 15 students, plus their teacher, that went into an Apple Store. Each student had a gift card from the school to purchase a MacBook. And, each transaction was to be handled separately.
The employee then discovered that the students were "speaking" to each other in sign language. They were from the nearby school for the deaf.
A couple hours later, the employee went on his lunch break, going to the food court in that mall. And who should he see there?
Seems they were conducting an experiment. They were spending the day at the mall. They had pretended to be deaf, and gone store to store to see how they would be treated.
Their discovery? In their words, almost every store treated them terribly, clearly preferring to be done with these "deaf kids" as soon as possible.
In fact, no other employee in the mall had even grabbed a pencil and paper in an attempt to communicate with them.Quite the "Mystery Shopper" experience, isn't it?
Might this make an interesting discussion topic for your next staff meeting?
- How should we treat people who "are a little different", as the Apple employee described them?
- And, how should we feel about being part of "an experiment"? Just because we work in a mall, in a store that is open to the public, does that mean retailers should be "fair game" for someone's sociology experiment?
We believe that "Retail is a mirror of society." And this is just one more example.
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