I almost always answer: ‘If I set the prices, I wouldn’t be working behind the till.’
Ah, yes. As a museum buyer and former floor grunt, I hear this all the time. My favorite was when someone would say, “I can get this cheaper at Wal-Mart.” Really? You can find handmade Peruvian pottery at Wal-Mart, now? Or, the alternative, “You know this pottery is less than half this price in Lima.” Wow, that must be cheap airfare, if you can fly all the way to another country and and still save money over our store. :rolleyes:
Whenever I got the “Your prices are too high” rant, I would just politely explain how our prices are very competitive for unique merchandise and then I would go on a long-winded pedantic explanation of how sales benefit our wonderful educational program, blah, blah, until their eyes would glaze over and they’d give up out of sheer boredom.
And I may one day reach the breaking point over “I guess it’s free” when you encounter a missing price tag. That phrase is not original or clever. We regularly sweep the store for items with missing tags, but sometimes we miss one, OK?
That can be a reasonable question, depending on context.
My retailing experience is mainly in high-end outdoor sporting goods, and customers would frequently ask that question, especially if they didn’t know much about the products. I mean, if you’re used to $30 jackets from Wal-Mart, you might legitimately want to know why a parka costs $350. Of course, there’s a big difference between someone who politely inquires about why the parka is $350, and someone who is just bitching and moaning.
One of the best lessons in management I ever got:
I was returning from lunch with the VP of Marketing. The receptionist was sitting at her desk crying. We asked what was wrong, and she said that a customer had called for Dave (said VP of Marketing). She told him Dave was at lunch, and the fellow spewed obscenities at her, saying that he really needed to talk to Dave right now.
Dave picked up the lobby phone and called the customer. He said something like, “As the VP of Marketing, I’m paid to take this kind of abuse from customers. The receptionist isn’t. She isn’t responsible for where I am or what I’m doing. You may call and abuse me any time you like, but if you do it to her again, I will recommend that you take your business elsewhere. I’m going to hand the phone to the receptionist now and I’d like you to apologize to her.”
The customer apologized to the receptionist, and she absolutely worshipped Dave for standing up for her like that.
When I managed a tech support group, I took that lesson to heart more than once, and told everyone there that they were welcome to transfer calls to me any time. As long as people have someone to vent to, they tend to calm down pretty quickly.
The funniest gripe about prices that I heard in almost 3 years at Target was from a seven year old boy. He saw a rack of leather coats for $100 each and told his mother that that was unpossible. A hundred dollars for a coat was unpossible.
I had to laugh. Leather is often MUCH more expensive than that. Now, you get what you pay for (somewhat) so perhaps one would be silly to buy a leather coat like that from Target, but it was just SO obvious that the child had no idea how much a leather coat should cost. A hundred dollars was obviously more money than he could get his mind around.
As long as I’m discussing leather coats and odd guests at Target- we also had a lady who wanted to get a coat for $40 off because that was what it would cost her to get it altered to fit properly. (Umm, if I were going to buy a leather coat and have it altered, I start with a coat that I thought was worth the effort. I also couldn’t see what was so horribly wrong with the way the coat fit her in the first place).
And not related to the above, I got a large number of silly people at the jewelry counter. "Oh, Look! a tiger’s eye necklace for $20. What a great price. " I take it out so they can see it " oh, that’s what it looks like. Look lady, the tiger’s eye should be properly cut . . . "
Or alternately “That’s what a $200 diamond ring looks like? I can hardly see the diamond”
Honestly, some days I wanted to say to them, remember where you are? Target, not a fancy jewelry store. I don’t think Target’s prices on the jewelry are that far out of line, but if you want high quality jewelry (or visible diamonds) you are going to have to pay more than these items are worth.
Thank you! Thank you! This is one of my pet, PET peeves.
My pigfucker boss sets all the prices for product in the tiny art supply store I otherwise am the sole worker and operator of. I have SO many goddamn people treat me like shit because something is expensive. Often, I wholly agree that some of our product is way overpriced. I tell them this, and tell them my boss sets all the prices, not me, and that I’ll be happy to give them his office extension so they can tell him their opinion. 95% of the time they choose not to hear this, and continue to act like an asshole to me about it, even though I’ve made it perfectly clear that I can’t do ANYTHING about it myself. I’ve told my boss that we should really think about lowering prices on some things, and he just gave me a lecture on the operating costs of the store and how we need to mark things up 200% to cover it. Operating costs, my ass. Flourescent lights and a computer are all I have going there during the day - barely a drop in the bucket, compared to the profit we make in a month.
Not necessarily…
The SS Minnow went on a three hour tour, and look what happened to them.
Aint just retail. I just examined a cat with head trauma. Mandibular and maxillary fractures, unable to eat, a real mess. And the cat’s wounds are 72 hours old (owners have been busy). When I gave them a quote of $450 to $550 for complex orthopedic surgery they became irate.
This is the pit, verdad? Well, fuck 'em.
Oh, jeepers. 
I also work in a copy shop, and there isn’t a day that goes by that some customer doesn’t complain about pricing. I ALWAYS tell them the price of color copies up front, so I cut their bitching off before we actually run their job; however, when customers want document creation work (graphic design, typing out resumes for them, creating flyers, cards, posters, etc.) they always try to haggle over price (we charge $90 an hour). Since I’m the one who does all the digital work, I’m the one who hears all the complaints. Yeah, $90 an hour is a lot of money - think how I feel, as I’m the one actually doing all the work and only getting paid a tiny fraction of that $90. I always tell them they’re free to find a graphic designer who can do it cheaper (though they’d probably do it in a program the customer didn’t own) or learn to do it themselves if they don’t like our price, and guess what? They usually end up using us. I’ve worked at this job for four years, and spent a good portion of the rest of my work history in retail, but this is the only job I’ve had where people actually tried to negotiate the price. Man, this is a corporation, not some souvenir stand in Tijuana.
Love these folks-they’re such good sport. I submit a proposal for project X at the Dumshit residence. Mr. Dumshit reacts to my proposal as if I’ve just handed him a steaming turd. *Your proposal is 1500 more than the others!* May I see the other proposals, Mr. Dumshit? Review proposals-one written in pencil on a lumber yard pad-degree of detail=build room for x. Another one cut above, but identifies no responsibility, and provides no material breakout.
Mine includes detail: excavate and pour monolithic footer not less than 3/0 below grade, using #3500 central mix concrete, as approved by Authority Having Jurisdiction…all drawings, permits, inspections and other paperwork required to be the responsibility of the Contractor…all framing lumber to #2 or better Hem-Fir…and on and on.
And Mr. Dumshit will still say, But your proposal is $1500 more than the others!
Thank you for letting me bid your project, Mr. Dumshit-I recommend you hire one of the other companies. 
Or you could say: But my proposal goes up to eleven!
Jeezus. I hope they at least had the surgery done and didn’t either abandon the cat or have it euthanized. FWIW, that price is INCREDIBLY reasonable. You can be my vet ANYTIME.
I’ll tell you what makes me just as mad as people complaining about prices: people commending you for low prices. When I worked at Walmart I would always get approached by people who would gush about how much they loved Walmart and how they just adored seeing young people at work and how great our prices were. One old man said that it must be so nice to know that I was supplying the valley with nutritious food (aside, I worked in the frozen food section). Another old man went on for like five minutes about how our French fries were fifty cents cheaper than the ones at Giant Eagle, and how he was never going to Giant Eagle again, and why couldn’t Giant Eagle just lower their prices a little bit? I wanted to grab him by the collar and scream, “Do you want to know WHY your French fries are so fucking cheap?! Because we don’t have a motherfucking union! We don’t have automatic health coverage! Just do us all a favor and choke on these fries, you don’t have long to live anyway.” Er, yeah, considering how ashamed I was to be working for that company it really didn’t do me good to hear people talk about how Walmart was like their own private slice of heaven.
Some people think four dollars for a guided museum tour is expensive? I guess these are the same people who don’t pay anything when the entrance fee is only a suggested donation, either.
I’ve had my share of people complaining about the price of something. My favorite is the customer who asks “Can you get this cheaper somewhere else?” I always wanted to say “Yes! But I’m not going to tell you where! Bwah Ha Ha Ha!”
I work for a company that developes software for court reporters. For those of you who don’t know, this is a VERY expensive line of work to start. $4000 for the steno writer, $1500 for a good laptop, money for connection cables and junk it all adds up quickly before you can even start. Our software retails for $3995, in addition to all those other costs. If you want to be a closed captioner (you know, the person who types the words on the tv for the deaf), the software is $6995. Already, every customer we have (and we have a LOT) is strapped for cash. So what do the bosses do? Yup, charge an additional $495 if they want tech support to be available to them…per year…per system.
The owner’s kids are all living on their parents’ dime and the father just paid cash for a brand new Dodge Viper. Meanwhile, I"m stuck listening to computer illiterate fucktards bitch about how they can’t find their program’s shortcut icon and they have to pay $495 if they want me to tell them. The only saving grace is the gorgeous daughter. I need a new job. Anyone hiring an office savy doper with great computer skills and an affable personality? (Retail employers need not respond)
Amen. I used to work as a receptionist for a department that had serious and frustrating flaws with the phone lines for one of the services we provided. They didn’t have nearly enough people answering the phones in that section, so callers could be on hold for hours before reaching a human being. If all the lines were already full of people waiting ( there weren’t enough of those either), the calls would bounce directly to us, and all we could do was send them back to wait or tell them try try later.
After being on hold for a while, an automated message would kick in asking them to push one button to keep waiting, and another to schedule an appointment to see some one in lieu of waiting on the line. It lied. The appointment button sent the calls to us, and we couldn’t actually schedule appointments- they had to wait and talk to the other section for that, despite what the message said.
I can hardly consider people unreasonable for getting incredibly pissed when faced with this level of non-service. I was yelled at hourly, generally by the same people over and over because their calls would bounce back to my line over and over. And hell, they had every right to be pissed.
What did bug me was that the vast majority would only yell at us. Receptionists. Callers would often threaten to call the head of the “company”, but only for the purpose of trying to intimidate us into somehow fixing the crap they had to face…something utterly beyond our control. The threatened calls to some one marginally responsible for the problems didn’t materialize. They wouldn’t even ask for contact info to talk to some one in charge- just vaguely threaten. Ditto the threats to go to the press and expose the of our service. They were all empty threats.
There was nothing we could do about the fuck ups with the phone line. We complained (politely, of course, and along the few avenues open to the lowly public face of the department). Those directly above us complained. As far as I know, the problem was explained, acknowledged , and ultimately ignored right on up. They wouldn’t even change the inaccurate offer to set up appointments, because that message is accurate for some offices, and they prefer consistancy to accuracy. I fully believe if the powers that be had had to face even a tenth of the abuse and nastiness we got every day about the whole mess, said mess would have been tidied up. But it’s more satisfying to rant at the powerless clerk behind the front counter than to take the time to write a letter or make a phone call to a head office.
This was a public service rather than a business, otherwise it would have gone bankrupt long ago. Still, service that shitty is inexcusable no matter which direction the flow of money is going in… but screaming and cursing at a receptionist will never change that. I’ve tried to take the lesson to heart and if something really stinks, I look for a contact who can do shit about it and leave the poor front liners alone. I wish the clients back at my old job would do the same, because nothing will change otherwise.
I have this problem at the bar I work at all the time, and I imagine this is the case in every bar everywhere. Just tonight, in fact, it was the 21 year old now for all of 2 1/2 months who rolled his eyes when I asked for ID, and then had quite an issue with pricing.
Sure, $4.50 is pretty high for a shot of Crown*, I agree, but that’s the price. And by paying that price you get to drink it here, have me mix your drink and bring it to you, listen to live music, shoot pool AND make a fool out of yourself buying $3.00 vodka tonics for that Blonde* over there who’s still not going home with you. Add in all those bennies and it’s pretty reasonable, I’d say. However, if you still don’t want to pay $4.50 then you can walk right next door to the package store and buy about 30 shots for about 40 bucks, take your happy ass home, mix your own drinks and reminince about the Blonde Who Got Away.
Or, you could try the well whiskey, just $2.50, since you’re having me mix it with Coke anyway and drinking it like Kool-Aid and the only reason you’re actually ordering Crown is to impress the Blonde, and you wouldn’t taste the difference if I poured the Old Crow anyway. But no, instead you bitch at me . . .
Wait though, there’s more . . .
You’ve decided to buy the Crown, at the bar, at $4.50 per shot, but think you can still get something for nothing. “Make it a good one,” with a wink, or “How’s your wrist feeling,” or “Hook it up.” Well, for one, I’m sick of the winking, it’s not working, and secondly, this isn’t my booze to give away. If it was mine it’d be at least a buck cheaper and I would be happy to “Hook it up.” But, it doesn’t belong to me. I can’t give away something I don’t own.
However, if you keep asking for something for nothing, keep bugging me about it, keep up with the big shot attitude and the eye tics, I can guarentee that you will never get an extra drop out of me. In fact, short-pouring is as easy as over-pouring–maybe easier, as there are ways of making a drink taste stronger than it actually is. Of course, you don’t know that, because you’re a young, inexperienced drinker. You’ll learn. If you seem like a decent person, I might just teach you. Until then, give me your money, I’ll bring you change (and another vodka tonic–good luck with that) and shut the fuck up.
ARGH…this pisses me off. I’ll end this rant now, I’m getting stressed. But, yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with the OP.
*Blonde folks and Crown Drinkers, please don’t take offense, or just sub-in another adjective/over-priced drink of your choosing while reading this. Thanks
There’s one exception, and it’s sort of retail. The exception being car salespeople. Who are, in my experience, dishonest, sleazy fuckers who are genetically incapable of giving a straight answer to the simplest of questions. Like, for example, “how much is this car?” Car salespeople are the one and only reason I don’t own a car. Not worth the hassle and aggravation of dealing with the salespeople.
The owner chose euthanasia. “Abandonment” is against the law in my state.
The owner then had the gall to offer me a twenty dollar bill with the request, “if my wife calls would this cover you telling her that there was no choice other than euthanasia?”. I told him no, it wouldn’t. He was pissed. I hope she calls.