Today I was very badly treated by an employee while trying to make a firearm purchase at a Dicks store. Which leaves me wondering why Dicks sells firearms if an employee behaves in a manner that makes you feel uncomfortable and intimidated when trying to legally purchase a sporting rifle?
First, the employee seemed to ignore my presence until he looked around and saw that the other salesmen where busy with customer and he had to reluctantly acknowledge that I was standing in front of him.
After making sure the rifle was empty, and safely pointed at the ceiling with the butt on the counter top, he abruptly took the rifle away from me in a startling manner and handed me the necessary background forms to fill out.
I handed him my drivers license to copy and began to examine the background check form. He then began to, quite impatiently, explain in detail how the form should be filled out. I politely explained that I was very familiar with the form but allowed him to deliver a detailed explanation since I assumed this to be a requirement of his job.
This he did in what I felt was an abrasive and condesending way but filled out the form anyway while beginning to feel that I had made a mistake making the purchase there. When nearly completed I asked him a minor question about one particular portion of the form to which he answered in a disgusted tone and then pointed to my having abbreviated the name of the state and, very annoyed with me at this point, again disgustedly repeated a prior instruction about filling out all parts completely. I tried to show him that that particular box section was too small to fill with the complete name of the state and that I had never had a prior problem using an abbreviation when filling out that that section with any of several gun purchases I have made in the past with other dealers. He then, in a very annoyed manner, marked the form indicating that I should enter the name of the state in full in an adjacent box that was not intended to have the name of the state written in it.
At this point, having had enough of his adversarial salesmanship approach, I terminated the purchase and walked away to find a manager.
After speaking with two different managers and requesting an apology that he refused to give, I gave up and came home to file a grievace.
0 comments