Two years pass and my phone is due for an upgrade, so I do what any modern day teenager would: I head on in to AT&T to check out all the cool new smart phones. Being the pre-planner that I am, I had already done my research to see which phone would suit me. It had to be the fastest, have the best camera, and of course a built-in MP3 player.

After arriving at the store I realized that there were more phones to choose from than the ones I saw online. Curious as to how they compare, I questioned the employee who was helping me. I quickly found out that he did not know anything about any of the phones, including the one that I wanted. It seemed that he was learning more from my knowledge of phones than I was from him; there was no reason for me to even go into the store to look at new phones when I knew everything he was going to say, including stuff he didn’t know.

After deciding on my phone it was time for the rest of my family to upgrade. Instead of going to the AT&T store we went to Radio Shack and yet the same problem occurred. I asked about the RAM (random access memory) on the phone and he looked at me like ‘what are you talking about?’

Employees should know what they are selling. Seriously, you should be able to answer a customer’s questions on the spot. Employees are just not getting the training they need to get to be fully informed on what they have. I’m not asking everyone to know exact model number or how much memory is taken up by the operating system, just the basic tech stuff like the screen size, the amount of memory and how fast the phone will run–details that are mandatory for a tech-wiz.

Visiting AT&T has shown me that being qualified doesn’t really matter to some employers. I feel more “qualified” to work there than the employees who have helped me. I guess if my dreams of being an engineer go to waste then I can always just be tech support.

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Words by Aaron Bloom|Managing Editor