Dear Placemakers

I don’t know the name of the gentleman that helped us in your Kaiwharawhara store yesterday but I just wanted to report on some excellent service we received. We are apartment-dwellers and needed one of those draft strips with bristles on it to put on the bottom of our front door to stop the nasty southerly getting in. We found what we needed but as with so many things these days there wasn’t a range of sizes for different doors but rather one-size-that-needs-to-be-cut. With a hacksaw. Not sure who has a hacksaw in an apartment, but we sure don’t.

We approached a couple of your staff at help counter and asked if there was any chance we could get it cut before leaving the store. We explained our situation and the older gentleman was happy to oblige. He had a tape measure on his keyring and a builder’s pencil in his pocket, he marked the length we’d written on the back of our shopping list, grabbed a hacksaw off the wall and while his young colleague held the metal strip down he hacked extra length off right there on the counter. I was being very helpful reading out the instructions and when I got to the bit about cutting the brush with some tin snips the young guy ran off to get them from an aisle but instead came back with some bolt-cutters that were more suitable for cutting a lock to break into a shipping yard in the middle of the night rather than a size 4mm knitting needle. Obviously this was the most excitement they’d had in store all weekend! As an added extra service they used pliers to crimp the ends of the brush to stop the bristles falling out and creating more vacuuming for me, sanded the cut end and affixed the small plastic caps to make the ends look nice.

While all this was going on, 3 other people came by to see what was going on and got draft strips of their own so I hope our dilemma made you some extra sales that day!

Anyway, thank you thank you thank you for hiring staff that have made such a difference to our lives. People that live in  apartments who’s fathers are either on the other side of the world or live 8 hours drive away don’t generally have great big tool kits or saw horses or sandpaper and it was so great to have someone help us out. Today our place is toasty warm and I reckon it’s definitely thanks to being able to buy a draft strip an afix it straight away.