I Hate Action, but I Walked In Anyway

Action is a European discount retailer comparable to Dollar Tree in the United States.

On cheap wood stain, employees who do not speak Dutch and the businesses we help turn into giants.

Let me begin with a confession. I am not a fan of Action.

I have little affection for stores that import entire containers of plastic junk from China, distribute it across Europe and then make us feel as though we have saved money because we bought something for €1.79 that we never needed in the first place.

A plastic container to put inside another plastic container. A lamp that lasts three weeks. A garden gnome with a solar panel. And always at least one item that makes you wonder, once you get home: why on earth did I buy this?

And yet, I walked in.

Apparently, I too have principles that cease to exist the moment I can save €22.

How I Sold My Principles for Eight Euros

I live in a small village in North Holland, in a slightly oversized house with a rather generous garden. I therefore decided to rent out a separate section of the house. It costs you a little privacy, but with today’s housing shortage, you are also helping someone.

After two years, the couple living there finally found a home of their own. They left their part of the house beautifully clean. There was genuinely nothing to complain about.

Except for the patio.

I used to enjoy sitting there myself, but during the two years they had lived there, the garden furniture had received roughly as much maintenance as an abandoned fishing boat in the Sahara.

I used to be a painter. It is one of those professions that eventually leaves your body but stubbornly remains in your mind. I immediately notice when wood needs a coat of paint, where it has started to weather and where someone has enthusiastically painted around the problem rather than dealing with it.

The garden furniture needed wood stain.

Not much, because I will soon be moving out myself. At Praxis, a Dutch home-improvement chain, a litre of decent wood stain costs more than €30. On Action’s website, I found a tin for less than €8.

I knew it would be inferior quality. Action knew it. The manufacturer knew it. The tree the furniture had once come from would probably know it within five minutes too.

But eight euros is eight euros.

And so I voluntarily entered Action.

The Search for a Blue Shirt

Action stores are generally not particularly large. Even so, you can cover some impressive distances when trying to find an employee.

You walk past scented candles, dog toys, chargers that have probably stopped working before you have even removed them from the packaging, fifteen varieties of sticky tape and an entire department filled with objects nobody knows the purpose of.

But no employees.

Action has organised this rather cleverly. The shelves are full, the store is open and there must be staff somewhere, but the company has turned finding them into a treasure hunt. Anyone who manages to locate an employee does not win a prize, but is permitted to ask a question.

After about five minutes, I spotted a woman in a blue shirt. The shirt was the only convincing evidence that she worked there.

I asked her where I could find the wood stain.

She looked at me kindly.

“Wood stain,” I repeated.

Still a friendly expression, but not the slightest sign of recognition.

“For wood,” I explained. “To protect garden furniture.”

A conversation began, consisting of a few Dutch words, many unfamiliar sounds and a healthy dose of mutual optimism. After two minutes, I realised that she had no idea what I meant. Not because she did not know where the wood stain was, but because she simply did not understand my question.

Could I perhaps show it to her online?

Of course I could. After all, I had already looked up the product myself. But at that moment, something began to bother me.

Since When Is It the Customer’s Job to Solve the Language Barrier?

Let me be clear. I genuinely do not care whether someone comes from Indonesia, India, Poland, Ghana, Syria or Lutjebroek. As far as I am concerned, anyone willing to work is welcome.

But if your job is to help Dutch customers in a Dutch store, you should speak enough Dutch to understand a simple question.

That is not discrimination. It is a job requirement.

If I walk into a local shop in Bangkok, I do not expect the employee to speak Dutch. I may hope they speak English, but if they do not, that is primarily my problem. I am in Thailand, after all.

The same applies in Ghana, Poland or Indonesia. I would not indignantly demand that someone explain to me in Dutch where I can find the wood stain.

But I was not in Bangkok. I was standing in an Action store in a small village in North Holland.

It feels rather strange when, as a Dutch customer, I must first discover which language an employee speaks, then take out my phone and use pictures to explain which product I am looking for.

The foreign employee did not design this system. Action hired her, put her on the shop floor and apparently decided that sufficient Dutch language skills were unnecessary for a customer-facing role.

The company saves money. The customer improvises.

“Sorry, Lunch Time Maybe”

I therefore asked whether anyone else might be available who did speak Dutch.

The woman started searching, and I followed her. Once again, we passed the scented candles, plastic containers and presumably flammable electronics.

Along the way, we encountered several other employees. They too lacked sufficient command of Dutch to bring my search for wood stain to a successful conclusion.

“Sorry, lunch time maybe,” the woman eventually said.

It was 10:30 in the morning.

I have encountered many different working schedules in my life, but lunch at 10:30 suggests either an extraordinarily progressive HR policy or that every Dutch-speaking employee had fled the building as a precaution.

After another five minutes, we finally found one.

A Dutch young man somewhere between twenty and twenty-five. Friendly, cheerful and visibly willing to help.

At last.

I explained that I was looking for the wood stain I had seen on their website.

“Wood stain?” he asked.

“Wood stain,” I said.

He looked at me.

“What is that?”

There are moments in life when you must choose between patience, explanation and complete surrender to the situation.

I chose none of the three.

So I left.

Without wood stain, but with another reason never to visit Action again.

Cheap Is More Than a Low Price

The easy conclusion would be that Action is a terrible store.

From a business perspective, however, that would be nonsense. Action is an extraordinarily successful company. Its formula does exactly what it was designed to do: sell enormous quantities of cheap products to people who claim that quality, sustainability and good service matter to them, but who still walk through the door as soon as something is €22 cheaper.

People like me, in other words.

I knew beforehand that the wood stain would probably be of inferior quality. I knew Action was not a specialist store. I knew the chances of finding a retired master painter standing beside the shelf, ready to advise me on moisture regulation and the ideal thickness of each coat, were slim.

But even for eight euros, I still expected to find an employee who understood my question and at least one Dutch-speaking colleague who knew what wood stain was.

Apparently, even that has become a luxury product.

That is the real power of extremely cheap businesses. They do not merely lower their prices. They gradually lower our expectations as well. We accept less knowledge, fewer employees, poorer service, inferior materials and increasingly less responsibility from the company.

As long as the product is cheap.

We then pay the missing euros ourselves. We pay with our time, our frustration, our disposable products and the need to work out almost everything without assistance.

We Get the Businesses We Reward

It would be convenient if I could place all the blame on Action. I could then end this article with a principled appeal for businesses to invest in quality, expertise and proper customer service once again.

But it is not that simple.

Businesses learn very quickly what customers truly value. Not by listening to what we say, but by watching how we spend our money.

We say sustainability matters to us, then walk out carrying bags filled with cheap plastic goods.

We complain that shop employees barely know their products, but continue buying from the store that has removed expertise from its business model.

We believe employees working in the Netherlands should speak sufficient Dutch, but continue spending our money with employers who apparently do not consider that even a minimum requirement.

And I can write about all this with great indignation, but I walked into the store because I did not want to pay €30 for a litre of wood stain.

Action did not mislead me. It simply held up a rather unflattering mirror.

I was unwilling to pay enough to reward quality, yet became indignant when I could not find it anywhere.

A Low Price Is Also a Choice

Cheap is not necessarily wrong. Not everyone can or wants to pay the highest price for every product. Sometimes you simply need something that is good enough. And sometimes, like me, you are just being a little stingy.

But every purchase also supports a particular way of doing business.

You either reward a company that invests in expertise, quality and service, or you reward one that has discovered how much of those things it can remove before customers finally stay away.

Action understands that game perfectly.

The only question is whether we understand it too.

Perhaps, in the end, we get exactly the businesses we deserve. Not because they reflect the values we enjoy talking about, but because they reflect the choices we actually make at the checkout.

My personal contribution to Action’s success remained rather limited that morning. I left without wood stain and without a plastic garden gnome with a solar panel.

In retrospect, I consider the latter my greatest victory.