Malls and sales people

I hate Malls. Somehow the lack of oxygen and sunlight and the overload of items makes me zone out. But I went to one this weekend. Actually, it was the second time I've been to one in a week. The first mall was in Montreal, and it stretches 2 floors into the underground city, but up above, it has a glass roof that lets sunlight reach down to the lowest level. I didn't love it, but it wasn't awful, especially with the added excitement of being underground.
On Saturday I went to JCPenney, at the mall, in search of an ice cream maker. The only one they had looked rather flimsy, so I went over to Sears in the same mall. (I never went into the actual mall- just the department stores on the edges, but they were bad enough).
The customer service in Sears is excellent- in the large appliance and tool area. Everywhere else it's pretty dismal. (Maybe it's because those areas have windows to the outside- well, glass doors anyway.) Sears didn't have an icecream maker upstairs either. Well, they did, as someone finally told me, but it wasn't the kind I wanted.
So I looked around a bit and found a great deal on picture frames, including a very difficult size to find. However, the frames on the shelf were all slightly damaged. I finally got a salesperson to help me, and she walked over the frames with me, took the two damaged ones to the back, and came back with two more, having said very little to me. "Will that be all," she asked, ringing me up. But I pointed out to here that the top frame she'd brought out was also damaged. She quickly removed both of them. Then as she was ringing up the two smaller frames I WAS buying, she said-"I'll just put some black ink on them and put them back on the floor." I pointed out that they weren't just scratched but chipped. She didn't think it mattered. "If all the frames in my house were perfect," she sort of laughed, "I'd.." (she didn't really finish.) "Well, I expect them to be perfect in the store," I told her. And finally, maybe, she got it.
Next time, I'll try IKEA- yes, it's a big, windowless box with no service, but it has cheap prices and frozen yogurt cones waiting for me at the end.