chikungunia, salesman and process controls

Diwali shopping is a must do.Earlier it used to be a single event and all of us will get our clothes in one shop. Over the years it has become staggered with each one preferring to shop for their attire at their own convenient time.
So it was that I was left with shopping for athai last weekend.Athai has been expressing her desire that she would like to choose her clothes, a chance to have an 'outing' as it were. Nalli has opened a showroom in Adyar, so it saved us the nightmare of going to Tnagar at this time of the year.But the pleasure was short lived. It had ease of reach and ease of parking, but the shopping experience was not at all pleasant.
Let me explain. We asked directions for the counter selling nine yards sarees. We were shown the first floor(it left me wondering the trouble elderly ladies who are the customers of nine yards sarees have to undergo when the same easily be housed in the ground floor)and with great effort we reached there. The salesman, showed an entire rack and said we could choose what we want. Athai kept making very fine specifications; it should be very soft and thin; should not have zari border; and the threadwork border should be very minimal; it should be a plain saree, no 'butta' or 'kattams'; the colour should be coffe powder brown, black or chocolate colour. The salesman had no clue and kept popping up whatever saree he could lay his hands on. I did not realise that he has no clue about the job till he showed us the next cupboard of embroidered polyester sarees and said that they are also nine yards sarees!He did not know the first thing about sarees being in two different lengths!
In the meantime Amma was busy selecting a silk skirt for her 'pethi' and was looking for a matching blouse. The salesman there was totally at sea and kept coming up with colours which even mommie could see was nowhere near 'matching' the skirt colour, and that required some effort; mommie knows only 4 or 5 colours and would insisit on matching shades which were far from matching!(In fact mommie had to come back and choose a different skirt as the salesman insisted he did not have a dark green colour blouse)The high point was when he showed a cloth which was silk/polysilk and amma wanted only a cotton or 2*2 variety and the salesman said that the silk cloth was 2*2!Utter blasphemy!
Being a salesman and not knowing different lengths of sarees, not having a clue about colours and textures was appaling but i was willing to forgive as they obviously appeared new to the job and would learn. But they utterly lacked any interest in serving customers; we were tossed about from one counter to another and also from one end of the shop to another for no apparent reason.And there was no shortage of salesmen; in fact i felt there were more salesmen than customers!
I asked for the manager, and was told that they dont have a manager but only a supervisor; I said i want to speak to him. He was the person sitting next to the cashier and ostensibly jobless and not adding any value to the cashier's job. I asked to speak to him separately. He confirmed that all of them were new to the job and the experienced staff are all down with chickungunia.He kept saying that they have few salesmen, and i kept telling him that they are way too many. He kept maintaining they are too few. I realised the futility of the exchange and walked out of the shop.
I was amazed that with skillsets that require at best a 2 day orientation to be a salesman in a cloth shop, they were let loose with no clue about their job. I felt they were from deep down mofussil area, and the shop management just drove down and picked up unemployed youth from there and dumped them in the shop.When the supervisor is sitting next to the cashier and obviously doing nothing, he could actually be training them on the job.The place was hardly crowded and the diwali crowd had still not manifest itself.
I was sharing my angst with Shyamala and the quintessential IT professional that she is told me that they have not documented the processes and hence cannot attain cmm level5!or even an iso!
And i am told 'retail' is the next big wave!where is our preparedness to meet the wave, anybody?