West Elm Customer Heads Into Store to Buy Couch, Gets Ignored for Nearly an Hour

When you walk into a store, one of the first things you probably encounter is an associate asking if you need any assistance.

However, TikToker @huhawokay says that she had quite the opposite experience when she went into a West Elm store with the sole intention of purchasing a couch.

After waiting around for about 15 minutes for someone in the establishment to address her, she recorded her video to talk about her experience in the store, stating that the sales associates seemed to be actively ignoring her.

She highlights that there are "two associates" inside of the furniture store and that she's the only customer inside of the shop. After waiting around for so long without help, she questioned whether or not she even wanted the item any longer, stating that she's not a fan of poor customer service.

In another section of her video that she records from a couch inside the store, she highlights how other customers walked inside and weren't acknowledged by an employee who was working at a computer.

While she said that she "could understand" having to wait for help if the store was "super busy," she was flabbergasted by the fact that the associate didn't at least say "Hi" or acknowledge herself and the other customers who visited the location.

Later on in the video, she records another worker who seems to be ignoring her presence, as the worker up front continues to not greet other West Elm visitors. At this point, @huhawokay points out how there are three workers but only one customer (not including herself) and she's still not being provided with a stellar customer service experience.

At around the 6:15 p.m. mark (the TikToker says she arrived at the store at 5:37), one of the previous customers she put on camera walks up to her to give a chat. That's right — a customer approached her to speak to her before an employee of the store did.

The TikToker informs them of how long she's been waiting there and says that she decided to have a seat and wait for a worker to acknowledge her presence. The two converse a little bit about the couch she's sitting on and how she was planning on getting it in a deep green. However, the TikToker tells the other customer that she has no intention of buying it from that store.

In fact, she says that she's probably going to travel across town to purchase it from a different store instead of giving this location her business. The two shoppers continue to talk for a while longer, with the TikToker mentioning that she noticed the store employees didn't acknowledge the other customer when she walked in either.

After around a 40-minute wait time, an employee named Josh finally walks up to the TikToker to ask if she needs any assistance. She tells the man how long she's been waiting for some help while also highlighting that there are three workers in the store and not a single individual came up to her and asked if she needed anything.

He told her that the same thing happened to him when he walked into the store for the first time, to which she replied she was shocked he didn't do anything about it because he had "experienced it" firsthand.

Josh concedes that the store definitely needs to do better while she remarks that she knows the issue isn't just with the service she received, but that other customers, like the woman she was just talking to, had the same exact issue as well.

She then asks who "management" at the store is, to which Josh replies that he is. She then invites him to sit down and "talk" the situation out. The TikToker explains that she came into the store to "purchase" the couch and not just "hang out" for the sake of sitting in there.

The TikToker then goes on to state that she's not going to state it's a "race thing" because she saw another customer, a white woman, not be acknowledged by store staff either. She also added that she's not upset at the employee specifically, because it seems like a cultural issue with the store at large.

As the video progresses, she tells the man that she's not going to be purchasing a couch from that location but at another store instead. In a text overlay, she writes that he was still trying to get the sale of the couch to his friend, asking if he could call ahead at the other location to let them know he was sending the TikToker their way.

However she stated that it's not going down like that because she wants to walk inside of the store and see if they're going to earn her sale by exhibiting good customer service, or if they're going to treat her like the staff did at this store.

She also posted an update on the situation, stating that she didn't want to turn the situation into an angry shouting match, but rather an opportunity for her to communicate her needs to the employee.