The Container Store — Local services in Houston

Another update: new team, new attitude, far better than it was. The prices have gone up up up, and the selection not as great as it used to be, but what is.

Post Covid addition: Same woman with the frosted 1980s blond bob giving the same rude, careless, vapid instructions with a grudge.

You walk in the door marked “enter“ you proceed down aisles according to the arrows, I get it, it’s all signed out for you, but the minute you go to get in line at the cash register, she says there’s one line she directs you to another line. You get in that line only to get to the front of line to see that she’s now opened the second line. Not once, not twice, not three times, 4 times the same individual doing the same exact thing. If she hates her job so much she should leave it.

When I said to a male cashier “I was told to get in the other line because there was one line, he proceeded to tell me, no there are two lines “I wish we had signs“ was his answer. Was he frustrated, rushed and didn’t wanna deal with it, yes but he was at least realistic and semi-polite about it. Management: you have about 465 signs posted throughout the store with arrows and social distancing and enter and exit but you don’t have a sign for the cash registers?

It’s the same core 10 people working at this location that have been there for decades, some of them are obviously begrudgingly. Look, I get it, retail is hard, we’re in a pandemic, no they don’t sell kidneys at the container store, I could leave if I want to and no one’s going to die.

If you’re going to be a belligerent bossy hateful human being taking your sad life out on others, maybe it’s time to find a new job or just retire altogether. If you’re going to go to work in a retail environment where it is this busy, have a better attitude. Pick a direction, put up a sign and stick with it, don’t change your mind midstream and decide you don’t like something and change the rules on a whim.

Again, like me make this clear, this is not a one time incident that I could walk away from, this happens every time the same person is at the front registers. Inept, caustic and borderline evil. This is deliberate, even if she were suffering some personal tragedy that we were all unaware of, her attitude is just seamlessly produced to be belligerent.

Below is the pre-Covid review done more than two years ago, I think it speaks for itself that things haven’t changed. By the way, it’s the exact same person that I’m reviewing:

Long waits at the register day, night, weekends, no matter what. Employees not properly trained to call for backup, scheduling failures or inept management- who knows why. Doesn’t matter, just needs to be fixed. Five minutes is completely inappropriate time to wait when employees stand and watch you and do nothing. 10 minutes is an even longer and inappropriate time, when it gets to 15, you wonder if they’re going to turn the lights out on you before you get to pay for your merchandise.

When I do speak to a manager I get uppity bitterness and attitude. No wonder this company is so highly rated by its employees, they're not responsible for doing anything.

When management stands around doing absolutely nothing watching someone struggling doing a complicated return and shipment order, then serves up attitude instead of an apology, you wonder how long this company is going to be in business. Certainly, I understand it's difficult to hire good people, but most of the employees have been around for decades if not longer.

Never,...

This was the worst customer experience I have had with curbside pickup. The website is not clear on what the process should be. You pick a time slot to pick it up, but it may not be ready then. I got there at the beginning of the slot and clicked the button to say I was there. It took you to the website and there was nothing to say you're there. Turns out that is because my order wasn't ready (had ordered it 3 days before!). I went inside only to have them not be able to find my order and had to call someone from the back. After about 15-20 minutes, someone showed up and said she look for it. She came back after another 10 minutes to tell me the order wasn't ready and I shouldn't have come until I got an email (would have been nice if the ordering process told you this!). It was going to be another 20 minutes before my order was ready. Her excuse was that they get 100s of orders of Elfa a day. Sounds like the store needs to hire more help, which would be good in a time when a lot of people are out of work. Luckily, we were watching online because we still had to click that we were there!! Again, terrible customer experience and no one in the store knew much of anything. Only reason it got 2 stars was because I love...

As someone that works in customer service, I expect to be treated the same way I treat people. I checked in to curbside and hadn’t heard anything for 10 minutes so I decided to call. Eric answered the phone and, with an attitude, told me my order was taken care of. I waited an additional 20 minutes and nothing. I went inside to find out that my order couldn’t be fulfilled because two of the items were not in stock. Guess Eric didn’t really check on that. (A little back story: I left work early to rush to get to the location on time). When I asked why no one told me prior to arriving that my order was unavailable I was told that their protocol was to pull items when customers were “on their way”. Word of advice, that doesn’t work. Orders should be pulled at a minimum of 2 hours prior to pickup time to ensure these items are available and customers do not waste a trip. When I talked to the manager she tried to argue with me which is incredibly unprofessional. Love the products but I think it’s safe to say that if you want people to pay a premium price for products they should be treated with premium...