That seems largely your co-worker’s fault. If I’d done that when working retail, I’d have been at least written up and possibly fired.
Also, if you’re too lazy to park 200 meters away and walk, what the hell are you doing hiking?
People will drive around for 10 minutes to avoid parking 50 feet farther from the door of the store that they will probably walk several hundred feet inside of.
Believe it or not, this grocery chain did an almost total “store makeover” just last year as part of their attempt to get a leg up on other stores, and this price gun system was a major advertising point to customers. Something along the lines of “making your shopping easier and more convenient”.
I guess nowadays you don’t need five-fingers to get a discount, just a price scanning gun.
Yeah, I wondered about that myself.
They may have been trying to protect their precious car (can’t remember what kind it was, but it was a sleek sports-car type) - the main lot was gravel, while the path up to the building was paved. He was clearly planning on leaving the car there at least overnight, and probably all weekend (in the *only *accessible spot), so parking it there would also reduce the chance of getting dinged or whatnot.
Now, I think that is still a stupid reason - what the hell are you doing driving into rural Newfoundland if your car is too precious to drive over gravel? But it’s at least slightly less stupid.
What gets me is when the customer could have gotten exactly what they’d wanted, if they’d just been polite about it.
Example: I used to work as a ride operator at a kiddie amusement park. Great job, and the managers were all nice folks. Entrance into the park itself was free, but you needed a ticket for each ride (about 50 cents). There’d been a few cases of dishonest employees re-selling the tickets they’d collected, so we had to tear all the tickets in half as we collected them, and anyone who didn’t would be fired.
Well, one time, a kid started crying as soon as the ride started. We’re in the business of making kids happy, so I stopped the ride to let him off, and then once he’s outside the fence, start it back up for the other riders. After the ride, the kid’s mother comes to me and demands the kid’s ticket back. “I’m sorry, I’ve already torn the tickets, but…” but she interrupts me and just keeps yelling at me. So as the next batch of riders is giving me their tickets and boarding, she demands one of those tickets from me. “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to do that, but…” More yelling, and she tries to grab the tickets from my hand as I’m collecting them. I can’t remember exactly how it ended, but she never did let me finish saying “…but if you go over to the ticket booth and tell them what happened, they’ll be happy to give you a replacement ticket.”.
Woah. Bitch was smart.
I’ve also seen those self-scanner hand held things. Nobody uses them at my store - they did, the first week they ahd them, but they never seemed to stay properly charged for a long enough duration.
This is awesome. Isn’t it always the attorneys, too? You never hear a history phD or a dentist demanding their time be reimbursed.
I’ll never understand why people don’t get the basic fact that if you talk down to someone, you’ll never get what you want. If you want to hurt them, go right ahead and be a dick - if that’s what you really want. But the same people are mystified as to why they don’t actually get what they really want in the end.
Even stranger, they will do this in the parking lot of the exercise club. Then when they find that close parking spot, they will go inside to walk on the treadmills!???
Where is this chain? It really seems like a bad plan that they spent piles of money to implement. In retail you always risk loss when you make things too easy for people but sometimes it’s worth it. In this case it seems like upper management has no realisitic grasp on what people are really like.
Yeah, I don’t get that either - being an asshole will result in people treating you like an asshole. It’s perfectly possible to lodge a complaint in a calm and rational manner.
But what really got me when I worked in retail were the people who were livid, and yet had no idea what it was that they actually wanted. More than once I had someone yell at me because we were sold out of a certain item. What the hell am I supposed to do about that? It’s not like I’m hiding one, or I can make one appear out of thin air. The conversation often went like:
Customer: I am looking for item X.
Me: Oh, I’m sorry, we’re sold out of X right now. Our delivery truck comes on Tuesday, so we’ll have more then.
Customer: But I need it!
Me: Well, I can offer you a raincheck with the sale price guaranteed, and if you leave your name I can put one aside for you.
Customer: But I need it now!
Me: I’m sorry about that. We usually have that, but it was unusually popular this week*.
Customer: Well I need it now! What am I supposed to do!
Me: Ummmm…
Look, you can yell all you want but I just don’t have the thing you want. I’ve told you your options. Either come up with a concrete thing you want or GTFO! No amount of yelling will make this situation different.
*Bonus points if the item was a fan during the hottest week of summer, a heater during the coldest week, or a shovel after a heavy snowstorm. Yes, these things are sold out quickly under those circumstances. I refuse to believe that people don’t know this.
You never ever ring something up until the money changes hands. THat was a really bad call. If you want to hold it for a couple of hours until she comes back with the money then do that.
What shocks me is that even when her kids questioned her she still took it without paying. Nice example set there. Do you suppose they bought it when she explained how it wasn’t her fault the employees were stupid.
“But it’s your fault you’re not honest”
Circuit City could special order and we were told it was a law that we have to have an advertised item on display. {maybe that was bullshit just to increase orders} but more than one customer was irrate that we wouldn’t sell the display, even after we offered to special order.
One customer bought a discontinued close out display model TV which stopped working witrhin the 30 day return policy.
“I want this exact model,”
“Well that was a close out and they don’t make it anymore. I can’t order it and no stores have one. I can give you full credit toward something else”
“That’s the model I bought and I want that exact model”
“And I’d love to give it to you but I don’t have it and can’t get it”
“Not good enough, I want what I paid for, that exact model”
That’s when you feel like turning around and saying
“Look up my ass and if you see one there just yank it on out”
What I usually get from there is one or more of the following;
1> I demand to speak to your Manager/Director/Vice President/CEO, because your company is going to get me one of those TODAY.
2> I don’t care if they’re sold out. You must have a stock there somewhere set aside for emergencies. Give me one of those. (I’m 2,000 miles from the warehouse, I don’t any secret stock hidden in my cube. I swear.)
3> Well then call around to all of your locations, find one for me and have it couriered to me this afternoon.
4> I’m really important and I can’t wait. My mother’s birthday is next week. I promised my children one. God said the world would end if I didn’t get one. So you have to take one from someone else who already has one reserved and send it to me instead.
5> It’s not my fault your company is too fucking stupid to have made enough of them so that I can get one today. It’s not my problem. I WANTS IT NOW AND YOU WILL GET ME ONE OR I WILL HOLD MY BREATH UNTIL I TURN BLUE AND SUE THE FUCKING SHIT OUT OF YOUR COMPANY FOR NOT GIVING ME ONE RIGHT NOW.
I have, in truth, heard each and every one of these. Well, except for the ‘turn blue’ thing, but that person was just that childish about it. Ok and perhaps the ‘world will end’ thing.
Working in computers I had a customer call and ask me to help him with the networking stuff he had just bought. This was back when netowrking was new and not so easy.
He mentioned a couple of items he had and I said
" We don’t sell those items. Did you get them someplace else?"
" Yes, I bought some items at your store and some at another store"
“Well I’d be glad to help you if I could but I’m not familiar with those products. Maybe the store you bought them from could help or try calling the manufacterer”
“Oh is that so? Well I want your name so when I bring all this stuff back your manager knows who to blame.”
I guess he assumed I was lying.
“Look sir, you’re asking me to give tech support on items you didn’t buy here and I’m not familiar with. I’d gladly answer your questions if I knew the answers but I just don’t”
At this point he got so mad his voice went up a couple of octaves and he sounded like a little girl as he yelled
“I said I want your name”
I almost burst out laughing at the sound of his voice. I felt like saying
“I’m sorry , I mistakenly assumed you were an adult”
Sometimes people just need to be told to fuck off with no pretense or frills.
I got this one a lot. Why on Gods green earth would we not want to sell you things if we have them? Especially when they are seasonal items and they are selling like hotcakes now but will be near worthless in a few weeks. I can’t imagine where people get the idea that you might have a secret stockpile somewhere.
I actually had one guy tell me that I was killing his parrot because it was overheating and we were sold out of fans (in the middle of a serious heatwave). He was like “It will die if that room is not cooled off! Do you want that on your head!” Oh sorry sir, in that case I’ll just run upstairs and get you a fan out of the ‘emergency parrot cooling’ pile.
I’ll bet you didn’t ask if it was a Norwegian Blue. They are sensitive to the heat. Prefer the fjords, they do.
Ugh - I have tons from when I used to work at a cosmetic counter, but two that stood out:
-
The store had a points/discount program. You spend $$, you get points, you trade the points for product up to 100% of the cost of the product. You must pay the taxes. I had a woman come in and buy $150 worth of product, get it all for free by redeeming her points and then come back the next day outraged that she didn’t get a 20% discount on one of the products that was in the flyer. Well, number one, it says right in the flyer that discounts can’t be combined; however, I actually looked at her and said ‘Miss - you received a 100% discount on your product. Did you want to return it and buy it at a 20% discount instead?’ She just didn’t get it.
-
After X-mas the store would put select cosmetic items on sale between 25% - 75% off. Fragrance gift sets were typically between 20% and 50% off. This is quite unusual in the industry - in fact we were one of the only stores that did it. I had a woman come in on Boxing Day asking how much the fragrance sets were on sale for. I said ‘Depends but between 25% - 50% off.’ She was outraged - ‘You’re all liars - your flyer says up to 75%, etc.’ So I pointed out other items that were, in fact, 75% off including make up kits, nail kits, etc. Now, remember, this is Boxing Day, the store is mobbed and there are people with 15 kits and sets stacked in their arms waiting to pay - there were SOME people who were happy with the sale. So Mrs. Pissy Pants keeps it up and keeps it up. Finally I said ‘Well, our fragrance sets are 25% - 50% off. If you’re not happy with that why don’t you go buy them at the Bay over there instead?’ ‘Well,’ she snapped, ‘why would I do that - the Bay NEVER puts there sets on sale at all!’
I just walked away at that point 'cus I was afraid the stoopid would be catchy.
Back in high school, when I was a part-time cashier at a supermarket in Pennsylvania, I witnessed a customer giving the manager of the meat departent hell because we were sold out of fresh turkeys. The day before Thanksgiving. On that day, of course, there are approximately six unsold fresh turkeys left in the entire Continental United States, so it was not that unusual that we didn’t have one. Worse, she wanted a big one - I think she said a minimum of eighteen pounds - and there’s just no way. The very biggest ones are reserved by customers weeks ahead of time. We did, however, have some large frozen turkeys in stock, as our unflappable meat dept manager kept pointing out. The customer insisted that she needed to have it thawed, and how was she supposed to thaw it in time for Thanksgiving dinner?
The manager thought about it and said, “Well, you could put it in a bathtub full of cold water all night, I suppose. Or stand over it all night with a hairdryer. Or, you could come with me and we’ll find something else you can serve your guests tomorrow that will be just as good, if not as traditional, and next year you can come to me at the beginning of November and I’ll order you the biggest Tom Turkey in North America.”
She chose the Storm Out Of The Supermarket In A Huff option, unfortunately.
When I worked at a university bookstore, I used to get all sorts of idiots - you would think you wouldn’t run in to so many fuckwit customers working in a university and everything, but I did.
There was never one big horror story but almost every day I’d have either a little rich snob of a kid annoyed that we had sold out of his book one day before the exam, or worse, we get mummy and daddy ringing up demanding to know where this book was. The response was always “it’s on its way from the warehouse/the publisher/the blah blah blah” but this was unsatisfactory.
One girl was the whingiest little twit ever, complaining that her biology book was late, and I asked her if she placed an order and she said “Yeeeah” and then said “But my other friends have theirs” and I said they must have ordered before her.
“But it isn’t faaaair”
“Well, the system is first come first served, you don’t get much fairer than that.”
“But it isn’t faaaair”
I think she was high.
Oh and another time and women threw a lab book at me because it had gone up by two dollars. And we got people trying to return textbooks they had written in, where the online code had been used, where the hardback cover looked like it’d been through a woodchipper, where the whole book had gotten wet…
And the father who rang up to berate me about an out-of-print book.
“I’m sorry sir, that book is not available, it’s out-of-print.”
“But I need it now”
“I do apologise, it’s not available anywhere in Australia, you’ll need to take it up with the lecturer who prescribed a book that no student can get.”
“But my daughter needs this book or she can’t do her course”
“If there was anything I could do sir I would do it, but I can’t.”
“WELL THAT’S EASY FOR YOU TO SAY, YOU’RE NOT THE ONE DOING THE COURSE”
“And I’m also not the one who prescribed an out-of-print book. Please take it up with the lecturer.”
I have no interest in helping rude people. As soon as they’re rude to me, the level of service they get is dramatically reduced. I was a “sales assistant” not a “sales slave” and was not there to be spoken to like a piece of shit, especially from self-important university students/professors.
In extreme cases, if a customer was an asshole, and their book was sitting next to me, I might tell them it was delayed by a week. And if you think that’s unfair, don’t be a fucking asshole.
There are few things in the world I hate more than customers who treat sales people badly.
I get this at work frequently, but the added twist is that it’s for Tuition Reimbursement funding. We have a finite amount of money to give away. That’s it. And people will say things like, “But I’ve worked here for 18 years and have never used any Tuition Reimbursement!” or “But I really need this class to finish my degree and I’m a single mother and I need the money to feed my 8 children” or some such bullshit.
It’s not Queen for a Day. I don’t give the money to the person with the most compelling story. I give it according to our well-stated policies.
And I do not have an emergency pile of cash hidden under my desk that I can dip into for well-deserving people.