To date, I've touched on Federated twice: in Exit The Grandes Dames of Retail. Enter? and, earlier this Bathroom Blogfest week, in Bloomingdale's Bathroom Makeover. In neither case did I consider the benefits that our Wear-Dated rep. in Pittsburgh shares here!Angie says: What I have found to be quite interesting in the Pittsburgh area is all due to the acquisition of the May company stores (Kaufmanns) by Federated (Macys). Being an avid Kaufmanns shopper, as any respectable Pittsburgher would be, the one thing that irked me tremendously were the bathrooms.
In each and every Kaufmanns store, the bathrooms were in serious need of updates and repairs.... Faucets -if they worked- didn't produce both hot and cold running water. Hand dryers at best offered some "heavy breathing" - totally ineffective for drying hands. Locks didn't work. Worse yet, toilet paper dispensers that "attacked" you as you were trying to use them [i.e., covers fell off!].
The bathrooms were messy: paper on the floor, water puddles on the counter, and no paper towels [and often no TP]. There's nothing worse than running out! What made it worse was looking at the cleaning log on the back of the door. Some mystery person would have initialed the hourly log at the beginning of the day for the whole day!!! If they did show up on an hourly basis, they might have inspected, but certainly NOT cleaned.
With the conversion to Macy's, other than changing the merchandise in the store to reflect the Macy's brands, I noticed some wonderful changes! They created sitting areas outside of the fitting rooms. Nice chairs, coffee tables, cool lighting......makes a big difference as opposed to that lunch room chair that was propped next to the teeny door opening to the fitting room!
And, most dramatically, they are closing down the nasty existing ladies rooms, one by one, and doing a complete renovation.... with updated fixtures and lighting, new floors, new sitting areas with nice chairs for those moms with babies, and clean diaper changing areas.
Still no paper towels as far as I can see, but at least the hot air dryers are hot and forceful! On that note, have you experienced the new super turbo hand dryers? [Sandra, isn't that the same hand dryer you refer to in What About Electric Hand Dryers?] They are wonderful! The G force of the air really pulls your skin away from the bone, but it dries your hands in a few seconds!
Good job, Macy's!
Off to Upcoming NYC Event: 11/3/06. More on the Bathroom Blogfest later!
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1 comment:
Sounds like the same dryer. They are appearing in lots of ladiesrooms these days. Aren't they great?
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