annesthreads

I've just got back from a 2 week visit to a friend in Boulder, Colorado. She and the friend I travelled with aren't quilters, but they were very patient and I enjoyed visits to the Rocky Mountain quilt museum in Golden, which had a fascinating exhibition of quilts from Pennsylvania, and several quilt shops. Thankyou to the people on this board who recommended shops when the question was asked a couple of months back. I was VERY GOOD, and haven't bought a lot of fabric, but it was fun to look at the wonderful stocks that shops there had.

I had one slightly "off" experience though. One of the (many) things I love about the States is the emphasis on service, and the friendliness and helpfulness of the people in shops and restaurants. However, one of the quilt shops I visited was the exception. There were 3 or 4 ladies working there, all enjoying talking among themselves. When I'd chosen some fabric and went to pay, the lady at the desk was busy paying for some things she'd just bought for herself, and completely ignored me while she did that. None of the others interrupted their conversation to come and serve me. Then the phone rang, and the lady I was waiting for picked it up and went off to find the colleague who the call was for, even though I'd been standing in fromt of her for about 5 minutes by then. THEN she finally spoke to me, to tell me that that she couldn't serve me until the call was finished! I think she was assuming I'd be using a credit card, though in fact I wanted to pay cash. I nearly walked out at that point, but my friends were looking at books and I couldn't catch their attention. When she finally served me, she didn't know what she was doing and one of her colleagues had to drag herself away from the chat to come and help. Service in the UK is often poor, but this was appalling. Sad, because someone had enthusiastically recommended the shop, and I would never set foot in it again, having been treated with such rudeness. It felt like a club run for the benefit of the employees rather than a business. I must say, though, that it was the only bad experience in the whole 2 weeks - and we visited a lot of shops! Such a shame that it had to be a quilt shop.