I Will Never Shop at Pearle Vision Again OR I Will Rant About Pearle Vision OR I Think You Get the Point

Customer service from retailers has always been a personal peccadillo for me.  (A peccadillo is like a big pickle except I have to check the spelling on it in my big dictionary.)  I expect common courtesy, a willingness to help, and simple details like that.  Apparently I expect too much.

Recently my daughter, Cressy, got a new eye glasses prescription.  Off we went to the mall to go to...

Pearle Vision.

La de dah.  We went in normal hours.  We were all happy to get the new glasses.  We wanted the transition's lenses so we would never need sunglasses until we lost our new glasses somewhere in between a mosh pit at Death Cab for Cutie and a demonstration on the mall in D.C. for the alienation of small, furry rodents in the Florida keys.  (Nine pound rats.  Nuff said.)  Anyway, we were ready to do business.  I was even mentally prepared to wait for other customers to be served because typically it takes a little while to go through customers in the eyeglasses place.  We went to...

Pearle Vision.

Upon arriving at the mall at 2:15 pm on a Monday that was NOT a national holiday, we went inside and found...

Pearle Vision.

We also found this.

I want to make it clear that the little, handwritten note on the door says: Will return at 3:00.  I can only assume they meant 3:00 PM, but I might have been wrong about assuming, as we would later discover.

So Cressy and I left...

Pearle Vision

because it was 45 minutes until the people would be back and this was a mall.  We went to see the Easter Bunny, who was conveniently hanging out in the mall, too.  He was nice enough to let us take a photo with him and also to pay his helpers for it.

It turns out that the Easter Bunny is a fun guy.  He actually knew what a Screaming Blue Viking is and also he knows a great bar down on...what was I saying?  Oh, yes...

Pearle Vision.

So we checked out the EB, who, incidentally, doesn't appreciate jokes about the size of his ears, and we cruised through the store with all the soaps and smell-good stuff.  We passed by Victoria's Secret because we all know the secret doesn't include Fat Women sizes, and also because Cressy asked, "Mommy, what is that?"  (I wasn't sure how to answer so I obfuscated.  "LOOK, a meteor!  Who wants a large, cholesterol-inducing pretzel?  Isn't that Justin Bieber?")

The As-Seen-On-TV Store is always a hit.  Cressy and I have agreed that we both want a Sobakawa Cloud Pillow, even though we don't really know what it is.  (How can you go wrong with sleeping on clouds?  Besides the obvious gravity issue.)  The Insta-Hang is pretty bitching, too.  ("Think of all the stuff you can hang, Mommy," my erstwhile super-genius child says.)  (I was actually wondering if people who offend me would stand still while I lined this gadget up on their forehead.  I guess they wouldn't.)  Meanwhile I want twenty cans of Flex Seal to see if I can make a boat out of a screen door just like they did in the commercial.  Runners up included Eggies, Slushy Magic, and the infamous Lint Lizard.  (Maybe I can get a job making up funky names for the As-Seen-On-TV Store.  Dish-B-Gone!  Husband-O-Matic!  The Deft Daddy!  Insta-Room-Clean!  See how easy it is.)  But no, we couldn't hang out there because we had to go back to...

Pearle Vision.

This is what we found:

Same note.  Same place.  I checked my Droid for the time.  It was 3:00 pm.

Ten minutes later:

Ten minutes after that, it was:

This happened:

The vein in my forehead exploded and pretty much drenched the place.

I decided it was time to go home.  When I got home it was nearly 4 pm, so I looked up the telephone number of...

Pearle Vision.

The woman answered and the conversation went like this:

"Pearle Vision," the woman said.

"Oh, you're open now," I said.  (This sounds sarcastic but actually I wasn't.  I wanted to know if there was a problem with the store and it would be open the next day.  I hadn't quite lost my mind as of that point.)

"Of course, we're open," the woman replied in a snide manner.  (Not exaggerating here.  She wasn't happy to answer the phone.  I wish, wish, wish I could effectively write the tone of her voice.  Utter disdain dripped from it.  It must have killed her to pick up the line.)

"You weren't open a little while ago," I replied.

"We're open until 9 pm," she said, avoiding the issue.

"So you won't have any more special hours?" I said, and yes, I was sarcastic, too.

"We're open until 9 pm," she repeated.  (I think she might be a budding politician.)

"Can I have your name, please?" I asked.

The woman hung up on me.  Must have been a dropped call from...

Pearle Vision.

The next day we went to Lenscrafters.  Nothing wrong with the service there.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying ALL

Pearle Visions

are bad.  I'm saying this one had sh*tty service and because of their sh*tty service I won't do business with any of

Pearle Vision's

offices ever again.  It's the way I roll.  Guess they should have trained your staff better.  I was okay with having to wait because these stores in the malls put their people one at a time in the store and they've got to go do stuff because they gotta.  But pul-lease, check the 'tude on the phone.  It's not like I was asking her to work at that very moment.