TOD 09.13.07

The other day I visited Fry’s Electronics for the second time ever. Wow! I felt so overwhelmed and lost that I almost asked a salesperson to page me…for me. As I was checking out, I noticed that the hand-held scanner the clerk was using didn’t work very well, so I quipped, “Ironic for an electronics store, huh?” No smile.

Then I noticed that every register has a green light on to tell people it’s open, but the one at the next register was apparently broken since the cashier was waving a ping-pong paddle with a number on it at the waiting customers. I kept my irony to myself this time. Not just that the light was broken, but that they had a whole system in place just for that sort of malfunction. But I was a bit saddened that the owners had given so much effort to building a great store but had failed to understand how such little things can undermine people’s perception of their products.

It’s a sadness I often feel when Christians don’t grasp how word choice or symbolic nuance can nullify so much of the good substance we have to offer. So my advice to Fry’s and my fellow Christians is the same: “Fix your lights and scanners. What you have to offer is well worth the touch-up effort.”