Lakeshore Learning Store

I love how convenient lakeshore learning is, and they have great teacher resources. However last time I was in I was laminating items for my classroom. I told the manager who was checking me out what the meter on the machine had said, and he questioned me. Like I would lie about how much I laminated? He proceeded to roll out all of my laminated and measure it to realize I had not lied. It was very rude and I felt like he couldn’t take my word for it. Needless to say if you can’t trust you customers maybe you should have someone standing at the machine or a print out. I won’t be visiting for quite some time.

I am often times an errand runner for my teacher wife. The staff here does a great job helping me find all the things I need. And most importantly, when I need to laminate something there, they essentially do it for me which is beyond helpful.

I am a mom, not a teacher, and I’m trying to do right by my little boy who recently turned 3. This store has all kinds of useful stuff for a family in our situation.
Art supplies in our household don’t get run through terribly quickly, but when I do need new tempera paint or paper to paint on, I spring the extra money and buy that stuff here.
Another group of things I sought here were puzzles. I found a decent mix for the 2 yr old set with a few unique and well-​executed puzzles in the mixture of Melissa & Doug mediocrity. I did *not* find reasonably priced, cardboard jigsaw puzzles for the preschool set. 24÷48÷63 piece puzzles seem like they should run rampant at a store like this, but they’re few, and they’re pricey. After today’s visit to LLS, I went to Target and struck out and finally to Walgreens where I found what I was looking for. Disappointing if understandable, I guess.
I went looking for stuff for my emergent reader/​writer/​math kid and every time I pulled something from the shelf, eight items stacked behind also fell down (boo!) so there I am performing clean up on aisle 7. But seriously, almost all of the sight words toys/​activities are just sort of not special/​unique enough that you couldn’t easily replicate them at home. Even though I am willing to lay out cash to have a product produced and assembled for me, the prices they ask here always strike me as roughly 50% more than is reasonable. And that’s even taking into account that I am an easy mark and an happy to be overcharged slightly for things I like. The point comes when you have to say «enough» and head out the door.
So although price for what you get is a rubbing point, let’s move on to talk about customer service. This is one of those stores where they greet you on your arrival and ask if you need help, this while you’re busy taking off your sunglasses and getting yourself oriented. Then they greet you again 4 minutes later (always friendly) and then four minutes later the other guy takes his turn, «can i help you find anything», and eventually it because exhausting. Just stay out of my grill. If I want your help, I will seek you out — you are the only other person in the store.
And then at check-​out, they’re constantly trying to up-​sell you and/​or sign you up for the various Special Customer programs that just make me mad.
Bottom line: I will continue to shop here but always extremely uncomfortably. They’re up in your business WAY WAY too much and there’s no appreciation that some people want to shop anonymously. And the fella who’s always there with the blondish hair and the glasses takes Annoying Salesperson to a whole new level. TAKE IT DOWN A NOTCH, FRIEND.

I could (and probably will) spend a lot of time and money in this place! I found everything I needed to start up the school year next week: name tags, border, calendars, posters. Everything is so well organized, which I think is hard to come by when you have stacks and stacks of paper cut outs to choose from.
I didn’t find a specific type of calendar that I was looking for, but it’s no biggie. I did, however, find lots of things that I was NOT looking for, which is inevitable. They have educational games and books that would be good for anyone with kids, not just teachers.
I’m glad that there’s a place like this in the area.