First date

A store I had never walked into before is jcpenney. But its CEO, Ron Johnson, came to deliver a great keynote address to the Citizen's League of MN. I had worked with Ron at Target, where he rolled out the Michael Graves line. He then joined Apple and rolled out the Apple stores. (Remember life before iPods? Before Apple stores? No? Best not to.)

Now, he's taken on jcpenney and has already upped the ante. The Liz Claiborne shop is great. The jcp brand seems solid, somewhat like the Gap - clothes that will last 20 years. That's the kind of purchase I am looking to make. I gave away clothes about four years ago simply because I had had them for 15 years. I'll never make that mistake again. Their style and structure was timeless and I miss them.

In preparation for Ron's keynote, I felt I needed to visit a store.

Why hadn't I gone to jcp sooner? Well, the foreboding entrance. It seems I will be swallowed up into a cave. (I am married to an Architect, whose running commentary about the sorry state of design has become embedded in my psyche. Even my teenage daughter casts off the "That's bad design" aspersion to everything from building facades to can openers. A future Jony Ive?)

To get around the icky entrance, I entered through the mall entrance.

What hit me was that jcp is transforming from the inside out. It wasn't perfect, yet, inside, but I can see where it's going.

I love that the price is the price. No 99 cents at the end. I love that each time I turned a tag over to look at the price, it was more fair than I had expected. Most of the fabrics were not made of modal or ramie or acrylic, crappy fabric that is sewn into shoddy products. A recent Macy's internet purchase of a sweater described as 100% cotton came and was 100% acrylic. I will be returning that item, 100% sure of that.

So, I ended up with four shirts. In the hour and a half I spent there, I had covered only the second floor. Time for a second date soon.

jcp will continue its metamorphosis because Ron not only an innovator, he has patience. What a smart, kind and highly creative person to have as CEO.

Vitamin Shoppe

In an effort to wean myself off Ambien, I stopped at the Vitamin Shoppe to find a lower-cost alternated to Kavinace and Travacor.

The guy there showed me eight options and confused me greatly. I couldn't track what he was talking about. Interspersed between unwieldy strings of words ending in "amino acids" and "globulin" were things like, "I have a degree in nutrition." "I'm the one who trains the staff here." And my favorite, "I don't mean to sound like a used car salesman."

Well, then don't.

In the end, he recommended a product called Sleep Optimizer and promised to call when it came in on Thursday.

Thursday came and went.

On Saturday, I stopped in again.

"You didn't call me."

"Well, I don't work on Thursdays."

I continued to look at him, blinking once.

"Besides, the post it note is gone. Someone's been throwing away the post it notes. Rob, did you throw away all those post it notes?" as he continues to look busy moving bottles around.

And again, with the used car salesman crap.

In the end, because my desire to get off Ambien is greater than my anger at this stup, I spend the $20 on it.

What drove this purchase? Desperation. A $20 gamble that may lead to a grudge and boycott.

What will drive a future purchase? End the asshole customer service, Vitamin Shoppe. Plus, this stuff better work.

This stuff better work.

I vote with my checkbook (or debit card)

I worked for Target for 10 years, and as anyone who's ever talked to my about my career knows, I loved it there. So it's no surprise that I despise Wal-Mart. In fact, I have some long-running grudges I've held against many companies, but Wal-Mart is at the top of the list.

Here are two Wal-Mart stories:

Once, in the Wisconsin Dells, my husband and I were forced to go to Wal-Mart because there was no other store to go to. We needed diapers. While there, a tornado warning went off. Our daughter was with my Mom, but as Jim and I looked at one another, we both had different thoughts ending in the same action: getting the hell out of there. Jim's was, "We've got to get back to Marcy." Mine was, "I am not going down in a Wal-Mart store." We ran out just as they were locking the front doors.

In my other experience with Wal-Mart, we again were there out of necessity. Our daughter's flip flop had broken. We grabbed a few other things we needed and headed to the check out. My daughter placed her foot with the new flip flop with the price tag on it for the cashier to scan, which she did. As we walked out, a security officer stopped us and asked sternly and accusingly if we had paid for the flip flops. We produced a receipt to prove we had and the flip flops weren't on it! She grabbed my arm and marched us back in and to the cashier, who scanned it again and we paid. No apologies. No explanation to the security guard. And it felt humiliating. I was treated like a criminal in front of my daughter. That's good customer service?

So Wal-Mart is on my company grudge list and has stayed there for a least a decade.

What drove these Wal-Mart purchases? No other choice. Again with the desperation.

What will drive future Wal-Mart purchases? I will never shop Wal-Mart again. There's a new one slated to go up about three miles away. Gross.

Wal-Mart: the Evil Empire.