Retail Store Employees & Pesticide Training?
Q: Retail Store Employees & Pesticide Training? Many Retail Store Employees Lack Training on Pesticides If you've been relying on the garden department employees at your local discount, hardware, and building supply stores to recommend appropriate pesticides, maybe you should be asking first how much training they have received. A survey conducted recently in Illinois has revealed that only 34% of about 600 retail stores with garden departments gave any training to their employees with regard to pesticide use -- and that about 50% of the employees who did receive such training considered that training inadequate. (Typically, the training was provided either by store personnel or by chemical company product representatives; just 12% of trainees attended school or college classes on pesticide use.) Given that most retail employees lack any formal training on pesticides, where do they obtain detailed information upon which they can base recommendations to consumers? Based on the results of the Illinois survey, they rely heavily on the Ortho Problem Solver and product labels. Only a few of the survey respondents consulted university or U.S.D.
A: literature.
A:- I can definately confirm this. I used to work in the garden center at
Wal-Mart. I made an extra special effort to educate myself as much as
possible, and I eventually lost my job because I knew more than my
boss and she felt threatened. Even at that, what I knew about
pesticides would not fill a thimble. In my defense, I didn't sell
very many pesticides to people who sought my recommendations for how
to deal with problems, and I rarely used the Ortho Problem Solver
(only once that I can think of, and for a gentleman who absolutely
insisted on finding a solution in a bag or a bottle).
When I was hired in they had a "Certified Gardener" program in place,
and there really were lots of difficult questions. I feel like anyone
who passed those tests came out with a pretty high degree of
knowledge. Well, except they were multiple choice and you could take
them four times and see which ones you got wrong and what you answered
last time. In other words, anyone who could fail four times in a row
was too stupid to live. I got like a 67 taking the tests straight out
without studying at all, and then I got up to a 95% after studying and
doing the retests.
They weren't as comprehensive as a Master Gardener program, but anyone
who could pass those tests for real should be able to offer a high
level of service to customers. In subsequent years they did away with
the paper tests and replaced them with proprietary technology I'm
probably forbidden to talk about. Judging by the graduates of the new
program, it isn't worth a damn.
My opinion is that in the '94 season that little green "Certified
Gardener" vest actually meant something, but in later years it became
meaningless. I wouldn't trust advice from the average retail store
employee any farther than I could throw it, and you yourself are a
fool for believing anything someone at such a place would tell you.
Wal-Mart and other chains do not want to pay for knowledge and quality
service. They want bodies, and only bodies.
After becoming as much of an expert on gardening as I could and making
a genuine effort to be helpful and friendly I was rewarded by being
transferred to the domestics department to fold towels for the next
year before spending the better part of the following 2.5 years
selling furniture.
The one plus from this experience is that I developed a love of
gardening