Home - Not So Sweet - Home

Written By: 090617

Clean, sanitary and organized; that is what you'd expect a department store and supermarket should be. Everything is in its proper shelf. Nothing is mixed up or in disarray. All products are neatly arranged for easier access. The salespeople have warm and happy smiles on their faces as they walk towards you when you need assistance. That's the ideal picture of your typical store. Unfortunately, in a certain store, it is the complete opposite.

Home Sweet Home is a chain store -- some would call it a mini-mall -- located along Quirino Hi-way. It is both a department store and a supermarket. They sell a lot of things such as food, toiletries, clothes, school supplies, office supplies, beauty care products, etc. Although the building is not that old, it looks quite run down, like no one even bothers to clean it. The paint is slowly fading. When you walk up the steps, you won't be able to stop your face from contorting due to the foul smell of urine that surrounds the place. Inside, the walls looked so grimy with cobwebs and stains. Everything, the shelves and glass cases seemed to be covered in a film of dust. And apparently, even their store sign is missing.

What kind of store loses its own sign? Apparently, this one does.

The sight before you is simply atrocious. Fallen hairs are flying everywhere and some of it is piled up at different corners of the building. When you walk up further tinto the store the humidity of the air inside nakes your skin crawl. Bugs of different kinds can be found in the store as well. One of the cusomers told me of an incident where a customer pulled out a bag of chips, a cockroach crawled out of the pile in the shelf. The products theuy sellf are of the poorest quality. When you buy Toblerone chocolate here it is cheaoer but as soob as you open it, you'll regret ever buying it in the first place. It's not expired but the chocolate seems a bit sandy like it's been in that place for so long. And when you take a bite out of it, you grimace at the peculiar flavor it has. That isn't the only problem they have. When you look intot he ice cream freezer, you'll notice half-open popsicles or ice cream pints with smudges on the side. You'd immediately notice the finger indentation left on them. It's amazing how the workers in this establishment don't notice these things at all. It's practically being done right in front of them. Packages of their food products are torn open with ants marching towards it, trying to get as many as their tiny bodies can carry. Probably the only safe thing to buy there is their juice and canned goods unless those are already expired.

The department store isn't any better than the supermarket downstairs. When you go upstairs, you'll think twice before grabbing onto the railing because of its rusty iron stench. The heat is unbearable. Just by standing in the room, sweat starts to form on your forehead. You look around and then you'll see how much dust accumulated on top of their products. An unknown gooey substance covered certain products like rulers and sharpeners. It was sticky and you cannot describe how dreadful it smelled. At the very center of the store, there are about five clothes racks. As you search through the piled up clothes and pull out an oddly colored shirt, you'll then realize that it used to be white. Someone even said that when they bought a pair of jeans, the zipper broke and there was no button hole. They have shoes that look like they have mouths because the front of the shoe opens up and flops when you walk. Toys that don't even function anymore are still displayed. Balls that are supposed to bounce high can't even bounce a mere two feet. They also sell pens in a 5-piece pack for around P 20.00 and then when you use them only one of them works. Sometimes, none of them can write at all. Everything's a complete waste of money.

The employees are just as horrible as the products. They either ignore you or pay close attention to you - in a very awkward and uncomfortable way. some of them even follow you and try to get some information about you that they really don't need to know like where you live, for example. They try to get too friendly. Some aren't even friendly at all. They don't assist you when you need their help. They just zone you out as if it's not their job to attend to their customers needs. Ask them a question and they won't even answer you. But when you're lucky enough to even get an answer, they snap at you like they're going to bite your head off with their looks that seem to say: "Are you stupid? Can't you go look for it yourself?" Rude and obnoxious people, why were they even hired? Aren't salespeople supposed to be friendly and courteous? That puzzles many of their customers.

It seems that people say this store is like a mall for those who do not have much money. Their prices here are cheap. Everything is affordable. Even alcoholic drinks and imported chocolates are cheaper here. No wonder a lot of people still enter the store to buy whatever it is they need regardless of the smell or condition of its products. They just ignore its flaws - all of it - so they can get what they need more cheaply. True, the store is still useful especially when there's an emergency. For example, you run out of paper for your printer. You can just buy a pack of bond paper there and you're all set. You could put aside the store's flaws for reasons like this. But still, Home Sweet Home isn't my cup of tea. No matter what others might say, I would never recommend this store to anyone unless they are really - and I mean really - desperate.