What's Wrong with Puregold?

To be the Most Customer-Oriented Hypermart offering a One-Stop shopping convenience and Best Value to our customer.  

This is the vision of the supermarket chain Puregold.  I am not sure how Puregold defines being 'customer oriented' but definitely this is something that they are not doing in Puregold Malolos.

I was one of the first customers of Puregold Malolos when it opened few years ago.  For the longest time, we have been doing grocery at South Supermarket.  All the excitement faded during check out.  The tape receipt shows 54 items bought and little did I know that the bagger was actually counting the items and based on his own effort it was just 53.  All the items had to be taken out of the plastic and recounted.  After queuing for more than 15 minutes these unnecessary activity definitely not customer oriented.  Just as I thought the bagger got it wrong but he cannot have the tape receipt signed by the Supervisor if it doesn't tally.

Just today, I chose to do my grocery at Puregold instead of going to Robinsons Supermarket simply because I am in a hurry and it's past 8:00PM.  Surprisingly, they no longer count the goods manually, the cashier and the bagger just had to sign the tape receipt.  But as I head the exit, the bagger told me the Supervisor had to sign the receipt before I take the grocery items.  I don't understand what the signature is for.   Clearly all their 3 signature does not have any value add.  To top it all, the guard had to check my receipt again and the items i bought before going out.

All these non value adding activities are a total waste of time and money.  Rather than coming up with this ridiculous process why wouldn't they focus on making their customer feel better during and after shopping?  Clearly such activities are not in any manner customer -oriented.

Not that they only make the signature of these employees meaningless but it only hampers smooth check out from the store.  There are so many checks which doesn't really balance things.  What difference does it make when a receipt is signed or not by the cashier, bagger and Supervisor?  The guards checking the receipt and the items bought, can they actually tell if something is not in the receipt?  If the receipt says 3 bags and i only have 2 bags will they held me inside to produce the other bag?

Earlier, the lady guard stationed before the grocery entrance did not allow our own shopping bags to be brought inside.  Instead it should be deposited in their baggage counter.   Do they actually think I will be stealing something inside and put it on my eco friendly bag that is too big to get unnoticed?

Where is the the customer-orientedness in this process?  Never did I had this experience from SM, Rustans, Landmark, Robinsons or even South Supermarket.  I know Puregold targets the mass market but regardless of your target market a customer is a customer.  When you say you envision your company to be customer-oriented you have to make your customer feel like going back again and again to your store.

Puregold only makes their customers feel like some shoplifters or robbers.

Make Things Better

I still have big dreams for the Philippines.  I am not losing hope.  Every time I travel out of the country specifically within the neighboring Asian countries, whenever I see or experience something good, I tell myself we can be like this or we can also do something like this back home.  It may be called 'ingit' (envy) but I always think that this emotion can be turned into a powerful means to strive harder and be better. 

For ages, the traffic has been so bad in the metro.  Although something is being done year after year but definitely those seems to be temporary solution.  When the  LRT was first constructed along Taft Avenue up to Rizal Ave, i thought this is the start of better transport system in the Philippines.  Guess what?  There have been several lines constructed after the LRT 1 such as the LRT 2 and 3 plus the MRT but the traffic never improved.  In fact, the services provided by these railway transit continued to deteriorate.   How come the old MRTs or MTRs in Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul and Taiwan just keep on getting better each and every visit?

Even the issue on the airport services of the country became a www trending topic.  Thinking about it we may have poor services but certainly we are not the worst but who wants to be compared side by side with the worst.  People should be looking at this issue with 'improvement' in mind.  

Dream as it may be, i really hope that there would be a massive change of mindset of the Filipinos.   We have a pool of best talents and we certainly don't want to put this to waste.   I know people work because they need to earn but let us not put aside how to add more value in what we do.  Similarly,

Government and companies should strive to create products and services that should help build a better Philippines.  It's never too late to change for the better.