Customer service? What customer service?

Why is customer service so bad? Jay Goltz explains it all:

Because of the high cost of health insurance, many companies have opted to hire a lot of part-time staff, which allows them to avoid having to offer benefits. This creates a problem: It is difficult enough to train full-time people. Having them there part-time and having a huge turnover makes it all the more difficult.

Meanwhile, in the retail world, pricing has gone mad. It used to be that stores would have four sales a year to get rid of stale or seasonal merchandise and to promote business. These days, stores have “crazy once in a lifetime sales” every two weeks. When you have manic pricing, up one day, down the next, it wreaks havoc on customer service. When the sale is on, you don’t have enough staff. When the sale is off, the staff stands around and complains about the slow business.

And then there’s the issue of who’s running the show. Where have all the merchants gone? Their kids are lawyers, hedge-fund managers, computer programmers, professors and a thousand other things. The people running the stores today come from all different backgrounds. Many of them did not work their way up from the sales floor or have generations of family history and training to prepare them for the job. Perhaps they are even over-educated.

And here is proof you have to read to believe! Sears Finally Delivers Air Conditioner, Follows With Barrage Of Phone Calls

It gets worser and worser

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The credit market freeze has added to an incredibly tough sales year for U.S. retailers, and analysts warn that these challenges are just the beginning of what could be a brutal 2009 for merchants.

"The worst is yet to come," said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates Inc., a retail consulting and investment banking firm.

"We'll see some tried and true [retail] names disappear," said Marti Kopacz, managing principal with corporate advisory and restructuring firm Grant Thornton.

Prior to the credit crunch, retailers were already struggling with softening sales as higher gas prices and falling home equity forced Americans to curtail purchases.

Last month's sales at stores open at least a year, which is a key measure of a retailer's performance known as same-store sales, rose just 0.8%, according to sales tracker Thomson Financial. Forecasts were for a 1.5% increase, according to Thomson.

Analysts say same-store sales of 3% or higher typically reflect a healthy U.S. consumer. Since consumer spending fuels two-thirds of the nation's economy, such a low same-store sales number is a bad sign.

Update:

Nouriel Roubini, the professor who predicted the financial crisis in 2006, said the U.S. will suffer its worst recession in 40 years, driving the stock market lower after it rallied the most in seven decades yesterday.

What is going on?

The Dow Jones, the main US share index, reached another record high as it breached the 13,900 mark on Friday - a day after setting a fresh record.

The Dow Jones index of blue-chip stocks closed up 45.52 points, or 0.33%, at 13,907.25. It had earlier reached a new intraday trading high of 13,932.29.

But then:

US retail sales unexpectedly dropped by 0.9% in June, a report from the US Commerce Department says - their biggest decline in almost two years.

Sales were down 0.4% even without the effect of a slump in the car market, the cause of much of the fall.

Yet Tony Snow is telling us:

To walk out of Iraq right now would plant a seed that ultimately would lead to destabilization there, hundreds of thousands of deaths, loss of our influence in the region, would create instability throughout the Middle East throughout East Asia, throughout Europe. And sooner or later it would come to our shores, to a shopping mall near you.

And Bush is saying:

It's better to fight them there than here. And this concept about, well, maybe let's just kind of just leave them alone and maybe they'll be all right is naive. These people attacked us before we were in Iraq. They viciously attacked us before we were in Iraq, and they've been attacking ever since. They are a threat to your children, David, and whoever is in that Oval Office better understand it and take measures necessary to protect the American people.

I don't know whether to buy stocks, sell stocks, go shopping, or drag out my box of plastic wrap and duct tape....