smokey
2A TEACHER
- Jan 31, 2008
- 31,497
This was the counter for most of today. With hunting season gone and the classic coming up in august, there's just not a lot of traffic right now during the weekdays...especially before 6. The weekends get a little looney, but they just hired about 6 new guys to ease the pain(also means 6 people learning their way around...so your guy may or may not be 100% on everything quite yet).
I will say it again though. Basspro is a box store in one of the areas busiest malls. Basspro deals with thousands of customers a day and sells lots and lots of guns. What that means is the store is often able to bulk order guns and beat out prices of competitors(and if not, they match prices of storefronts in md for in-store stuff). It also means occasionally, there will be a flood of people that overwhelm the staff. I've been to Gunconnection a lot of times because of his excellent service and great prices, but he'd have similar problems if 50 people came in to his store all at once for anything from finding out what gun to buy for home defense to just picking up a gun they've already bought. It's just one of those things that happens with a high-volume store, occasionally you'll have to wait.
The store tries to make the wait less painful by making the store itself a fun place to be. They have a shooting gallery, games, fudge shop, a rock wall to climb, lots of mounts to look at, a fish tank, summer camp for the kids...and so on. So if you do come during a rush, it shouldn't be terribly painful.
Even if you choose not to use basspro because you like supporting the guys that give back to our community like chad at scotts gunsmithing or dan at gunconnection, think about this next tidbit and how it impacts 2a in md. Basspro is a store that sells guns in one of the most visited malls in md. That fact makes the workers at basspro ambassidors to the gun world for people that may not be in to guns.
Yesterday, one of my students was walking through the hunting section with her mom. She saw me holding a customer's handgun and lit up, saying, "Hi Mr. SMOKEY0118! What are you doing here with a gun?". After the quick uncomfortable explaination of how this random stranger knew their daughter that usually goes along with seeing my kids in public, her parents expressed their interest in getting a gun for home protection. They didn't know anything about guns, and didn't know where to look for information. After a quick conversation and my e-mail on a card, they were on their way to gun ownership.
The point of the anecdote is the sweet spot of where basspro shines for us as a community. Seasoned gun people may get frustrated at the counter-jockey's lack of knowledge. Some of them are pretty new and may have a base of knowledge in shotguns...but you're asking an optics or handgun question. Seasoned gun folks(and beginners for that matter) get upset at the wait...although the wait isn't very bad during the weekdays or if you pm me. Where the store really shines is for the new person thats thinking of maybe possible getting something for home defense after that thing that happened. Or that person that went shooting once with a friend and thought it was fun but doesn't know how to get into it themselves. These people(beginning folk) often won't seek out and go to a gun store, because of various degrees of apprehension. However, they're at the mall anyway, might as well swing in to basspro while waiting for the movie to start ... since I heard they've got guns there.
I've been happy to introduce new gun owner after new gun owner to their first firearm behind the counter. There's definately room for growth with customer service to better serve our dedicated gun crowd, and the manager is working on that. Since he's taken over, we got reloading back, more counter and aisle space for merchandise, a bigger knife selection, black rifles, black rifle accessories, computerized 4473's(my tinfoil hat doesn't like it, but it sure does eliminate errors and streamline the process...plus shortly after the hard copy is printed, the digital copy goes bye-bye), and are now allowed to do external transfers.
One of our leads frequents this forum(he may be hard to look at with rough people skills, but occasionally he turns out to be a decent person ) and many of the counter-jockeys read the pages here. The more feedback the store gets, the better they can identify areas in need of improvement and the urgency to fix these areas.(you may notice the number system is now gone during slow times...it acts as a little motivation for the workers behind the counter to help instead of jabber-jawing between calling a number...that's largely your voices on here changing the way they do things to try to be better).
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