Michaels — Local services in Kirkland

I’ve decided to make a little piece of jewelry as a thank you gift for the girl of my dreams. I have given her several gifts over the years and I made almost all of them. One of the good parts about making gifts is that it is a great excuse to explore Michaels. I called up my daughter who loves such trips and off we went. The first thing to know is that getting into the parking lot is completely unintuitive. There are signs, but one of them is quite ambiguous. If you make the wrong interpretation, you will have to drive in circles for a while until you get back to the start and have to try again. Once you find the parking area, things get easy. There are usually plenty of spots right outside the front door. The first thing you see when you go in is the seasonal stuff. I am writing this in October, so we were surrounded by Christmas stuff. My daughter and I joked about how Christmas will soon start right after New Years. Of course, if you are making things, maybe it is not too soon to get started. Another issue is that there were no alternative holiday items. Do Hanukkah and Kwanzaa celebraters not need crafty decorations? I had a few specific items in mind, but we headed to the far corner, intending to take a look at everything. We started with the painting stuff. I’ve bought things there before, but I have no skill, so most of the stuff sits unused in my project box. We did find some art books and templates with examples of sea creatures that I can base my work on. Several expensive items went into my basket. We looked over the wooden boxes next. I have been collecting these to decorate and fill with various categories of things. I recently made a sewing box and I am working on a box to hold my Dremel tool and accessories. I need to finish that before I can allow myself to buy anything more boxes, even though there were some cool ones there. There is an aisle dedicated to cookie and cake stuff. My baking cupboard at home is not quite full, so we spent quite a bit of time there. In the end, all I got was a cookie cutter shaped like a mermaid. I’m on an undersea kick this year. We passed by the yarn aisle. They have a large selection, but the stuff we get at the yarn store is more interesting. In the toy aisle, I picked out a selection of little plastic sea creatures. Some of them will make good models for some carvings I want to make. We had a number of things to pick up in the jewelry aisle. As a bonus, they had some earrings in the shape of sea creatures that I can use for inspiration. I still needed a little box to ship the gift in. Just then, an employee showed up. I asked her about the box I needed and was told that I was one aisle away. They had just the thing I needed! On the way to the cash register, we were tempted by many items, but we stayed strong. Our only moment of weakness was at the candy display. I agreed to buy my daughter a bag of Dum-dums. Checking out was easy. They have a loyalty program tied to your phone number. You can also get a discount by applying for a card. While the high prices tempt you to get every possible discount, I was not in the mood for filling out forms with my personal information so I passed. I think they have upgraded the card readers. It used to take a long time to process a credit card, but this time we just breezed through. My daughter and I declared the mission a success and went home to work on...

I used to love coming here, organized shelves, location was great. Today’s experience was something different, which brings me here. I ordered 6 items online for order pick up, upon arriving to the shelves for pick up, it had a note that my order was oversized and to ask for assistance. I push the button, waited a minute, no associate came. Pushed it again, nothing. There was 1 cashier for check out, and a line was building already. I waited a little bit more and pushed the button again. Finally, I went to the cashier and asked if there was anyone available to help me. The cashier looked around, and said, not right now, you’ll have to wait in line. The whole point of me shopping online for order pick up was not to wait in line while I have an infant with me. It was to pick up and go. I walked to the line, it was about 15-20 customers deep. This cashier has not paged anyone for assistance to help the line move. I went back to the order pick up shelves and pressed the button again. An associate came out with a locked product for another customer and the cashier asked that associate to assist me with my order. They only gave me half my order and I had to ask for the 2nd part. Both associates looked super lost and probably frustrated.

I used to work at Michael’s during the holidays and we worked hard to keep the lines moving when they piled up. Managers would come out to move the line.

To the managers at Juanita Michael’s- help your employees out. Holidays are stressful times, customers can be on edge (myself included), but you can be present and help them, assist by training your employees to ask for help. Invest in reliable internal communication system if walkies were out of charge. Something so cashiers can ask for help when the line is piling up. To the cashier I was snappy at - I apologize. It wasn’t your fault. I hope the line went smoothly...

Just got home, I wish I could give this 5 stars but this visit was the worst I have ever had going to this location. I was looking for Halloween items to do so simple holiday decorating for the grandkids. I wanted to buy some of the foam pumpkins, a few unfinished signs for the littles to paint and was looking for an item I found on the website that said they had 9 in stock. I went to go find help and asked a lady who was stocking the shelf with Christmas sprigs. I asked if all the Halloween items where in the center isles or if they were elsewhere too. She proceeded to asked me to move out of her way so she could put away the items she was holding in her hand. I apologized and moved my cart, but wow, how rude. I think she realized she was being rude because she proceeded to explain that the center area is for seasonal items so all Halloween and Christmas items would be in that area. I had a couple items on my list but had trouble finding them, I was forced to go back to her looking for a hot cutting knife to carve the foam pumpkins. I looked in the area but couldn’t find it, so left without buying one. I’ll be going to the crossroads Bellevue location, they have a larger selection and hopefully employees willing to help. Hoping my next visit is better and the employee was just...