We have a weird bathroom. When we first moved in, we couldn’t imagine why the previous owner had not installed any towel racks. It took one trip to the local plumbing fixture store to learn why. None of the standard rods are the right length for any of the spaces in our bathroom.

Nonetheless, we picked out a style we wanted, one which was not on display, and inquired about the outer dimensions of various options. No one seemed able to tell us whether the length listed in the catalog was the measurement of the rod available for hanging, the distance between the centers of the wall mounts, or the outer dimension of the entire assembly. Guesses were easy to come by; definitive answers were not. So we did without.

A year later we returned, repeated the exercise exactly, and left with the same decision: to do without.

This past summer, we returned once more. I was determined to have towel racks.

It took a new employee about 30 seconds to tell us that it didn’t matter. None of the rods came attached to the wall mounts. All we had to do was cut the rods to our desired length with a hack saw.

I was stunned. How could those other employees not have known that? Why hadn’t someone told us that several years earlier? How exactly do you train employees to be that unhelpful?

So we placed our order. That was June 25th. We were told it would be a few weeks. We weren’t told it would be a few weeks before the factory would process our order. We weren’t told it would be 8 weeks after that for the order to be completed. We weren’t told that “the order has shipped from Sweden” meant 3 more weeks. We certainly weren’t told we would make so many phone calls and get so many non-responses while waiting more than 3 months.

Do you suppose that new employee, the one who tells customers helpful things, left right after we placed our order?

How about your employees?