Hillcrest Florist

Hillcrest Florist is a small flower shop inside the Hillcrest Mall in Richmond Hill. I have purchased flowers here on three separate occasions; every time, I was met with terrible customer service. To me, the foundation of retail floristry is built on the idea of providing highly attentive and personalized customer service. Menus, price tags, and price scanners are not typical parts of the business module. The products themselves become creative projects, the joy of piecing together separate things into a beautifully whole arrangement. Essentially, the environment is set up in a way which the customer and the associate interacts, plans, and arranges together the best fit for the customer’s floral vision in a dynamic and creative conversation.
Hillcrest Florist fails to embody the core of what they claim to represent — and doesn’t even pretend to care.
The worst of my experiences:
I went in one day in early December to purchase flowers for my mum’s birthday. I will just summarize and say it was clear from the beginning that the associate chose to interact with me as little as humanly possible. Even though I was the only customer in the small store and it was a low foot traffic weekday, she busied herself in the backroom, escaping any potential interactions with me. (For example, as per her muffled shouted instructions from the back, I quite literally had to pull a number of flowers from their water pots on display and place them on the desk, their stems dripping wet — I’m fairly certain that is not my job.)
I had plenty of questions, about prices, specials, number of flowers, colour combinations, her recommendations… But she failed to feign any interest in helping me, so I didn’t bother interacting much back.
The next few encounters would leave a bad taste in my mouth as well, with similar experiences of apathetic attitudes. As someone who works in retail too, I try to be understanding, but there’s only so many times one can excuse negligence.
In regarding the customer’s needs, maintaining professionalism, and the care of the flowers themselves… there is a huge lack of care at this business.
The products they sell, the flowers themselves are, of course, very beautiful. But one cannot expect the beauty of the flowers to compensate any buttholes in character.
Because people like me will notice, and people like me will not come back again.