Originally Posted by
rigger67
That's a bit harsh, mate.
I did 25 years in retail and have seen first-hand how the overall business has changed, been through three redundancies and enjoyed massive successes in smaller, independent traders.
I think in this case, what they've experienced is what's happening in book shops right now : they go in-store to browse and make their choices before ordering and buying online afterwards.
It's a phenomenon known as "showrooming", with people often taking photos of the things they want to buy while still in-store, in front of the staff asking them not to in some cases.
The exact thing started happening in the wet-suit industry a decade or so ago and many surf shops now charge people to try on in an effort to combat it.
I've got nothing against online as we live in a market economy and I buy online myself all the time, but this practise is despicable and only serves to show how utterly ignorant large swathes of the general public are if they can't see anything wrong in it.
But that was the first lesson I learnt in retail, of course ..