Maybe we should send them to the store together.
Of course, they might never be seen again…
I worked at a place that did price matching (If you find a price lower than ours, we’ll beat it by 10%). Our competitor, Home Depot, had the same policy.
One day a customer pulls me aside:
He: This drill you have for $49.99, if I go to Home Depot, they’ll pricematch it and give it to me for 10% lower than your price.
Me: Um, I guess if our price is lower.
He: It is. Anyway, since you have a pricematch policy, and Home Depot will sell it to me for 10% lower than $49.99, then you have to beat them by 10%. So I want to you pricematch me now so I don’t have to fool around any longer.
Me: I don’t have time for games. Get out.
Now I’m working in my hometown grocery store. A little place in a small town. Not dirt cheap, but not anywhere close to convenience store pricing. Anyway, I see a guy I went to high school with shoving a pack of cheese into one of my clerks face:
He: You know, I can go to Walmart and get two for the same price!
She just looked at him like he was nuts. He goes upfront, acosts two people who just came into the store.
He: You know, I can go to Walmart and get two of these for the same price!
They just look at him like he’s insane. I can hear him from the back of the store, and I see red. I catch the tail end of his yakking:
He: Yea, I understand his [the store owner’s] real name is Smith-stein!
I took offense to that comment, and everything it implied. And told him to put the stuff back and go somewhere else.
He: What do you care?
Me: That’s the rudest thing I’ve ever heard.
He: So.
I just shook my head in disgust and left. I told the owner the next day, and he told me he didn’t care and was glad I didn’t make a scene.
But, a few days later, he got his revenge. Seems Mr. Cheapskate was back getting lottery tickets (since he was banned from another place in town–he told them they were all jerks and stupid since they entered one of his numbers wrong), our owner walks by, Cheapo says, “Hello Mr. Smith, how are you?”
Owner gets a big smile on his face, “OK, but really, you should call me by my right name–Smith-stein.”
He waits for the reaction, and then says, “But really, I heard all about you. Get the hell out of my store and don’t come back again.” He turns around and walks away.
The cashier later told me she was so scared that there was a fight going to break out, but when the boss walked away, she just started laughing. And now Mr. Cheapskate has to drive 10 miles just to but his lottery tickets, just because he’s an asshole.
And that just reinforces my belief in karma.
I thought of this thread today when a guy walked into our store with a briefcase full of crap to photocopy.
I work in a college bookstore. We have a photocopier that we’ll let customers use for 10 cents a pop, but we’re not Kinko’s. Copies and faxes are more a courtesy than anything else.
So, with one hour to go before the store closed, no one was happy to see this guy walk in with a pile of stuff.
“They used to be five cents,” the guy says.
“We just got a new copy machine,” one of my coworkers says. We changed the price when we got the new machine.
“There’s a place where it’s seven cents,” the guy says. “Five cents if I do it myself.”
Go there! Go there! Never come back! That’ll show us the error of our ways!
My coworker apparently conveyed these thoughts in more acceptable terms, because the guy left without copying anything.
Whoohoo!
Oh god, this takes me back to my days on internet bridal newgroups.
People would bitch and piss and moan and whine and gripe about how their local bridal store was such a price-gouging ripoff because they could get the same dress, online, for so much cheaper!!
Well, sure, because the online store isn’t having to provide you things like sample dresses to try on. Or a nice store with air conditioning to do it in, with floor-length mirrors and an experienced staff. You can get your dress cheap, but you’re going to get it off the rack with no chance to try it on and see how it or any other style looks on you. If you’re willing to do without those things, then by all means, enjoy that cost savings.
What really got my goat is when these bridezillas would go to their local store to use all those gratis services, but then take all that information to purchase a dress online… AND THEN have the gall to claim they were serving good ol’ market-driven “justice” on the cruel bridal shop who charged so much.
I used to work at a fancy grocery store that had a lot of overpriced food, a lot of really hard to find foods, and very little of the common stuff (we didn’t carry any brand name soft drinks, with the exception of Coke botted in Mexico…apparently they use a different type of sugar, so it’s sweeter). We had a policy that if you found an item that was out of date, we would give you a fresh version of it for free.
This insighted monthly visits by these few older ladies who would parouse the store, look threw EVERYTHING searching for the out of date stock, and then try to get virtually two full baskets of groceries for free. It became a secret mission for many employees to run ahead of them and clean the shelves of everything they could find, which usually was maybe four items because the store pretty much cleaned the shelves every night. Yet, somehow, they always managed to find an incredible amount of stuff. So, one of the managers would go to the register they would walk up to, and have to go threw every item with them and argue WHY they’re wrong. Eventually, our manager just banned them from the store altogether.
I think my favorite though, had to be a guy asking me why we didn’t carry some bizzare fruit he had one time in Africa. The store has an expansive produce department with a lot of interesting things, but that doesn’t mean we carry EVERY FUCKING FRUIT IN THE WORLD!!!
This is the sort of thing I’d tell people when they bitched about our prices.
“Why is AMAZON so much CHEAPER?”
“Well, they have to pay for a warehouse and a couple people to find the book. We have to pay to air condition and heat this huge store. We have to pay for a staff to answer your questions and ring you up. We have to pay for chairs and tables for the people who sit in the store and read all day and never buy anything. We have to pay for the computers you can use to look things up for yourself…”
Ah, the elderly! I can’t wait until it’s my turn.
At the museum in which I work, senior admission is two dollars (adults are four). Not too long ago, we had a special event in town, and offered half-price admissions to anyone who had an event bracelet. I was astonished at how many seniors demanded the discount, even though they weren’t part of the event.
One of them told me that if we were willing to only charge a dollar for seniors who had the bracelet, we could really “afford” to do it all the time, and thus the two dollar regular price was a “rip-off.” If I had a nickle for every time I heard, “Well, in MY day . . .” I’d be a rich woman, indeed.
I went ahead and let a lot of them have it. I figured if a dollar wasn’t worth arguing over, though they apparently felt differently.
I find it kind of hard to slam the elderly when they’re trying to keep from spending more than they have to. My inlaws are retired living on a small pension plus Social Security and their savings. They’re not likely to work ever again due to their age and health. So every dollar spent will not be replaced “next payday” and if they can save a little, so much the better for them.
When I found out how much their meds cost, I could understand further why they have to be cautious. My mother just shelled out $260 for a 30-day supply of one of her meds.
I hope we all remember this thread when we’re in a similar situation.
My bitch (I mean apart from customers who seem more capable of lecturing me about the laws of competition rather than making use of them), is those customers who are convinced that my minimum-wage job at a department store gives me instant knowledge of the stock of all other stores in town. Not only am I a dept store retail guy, I’m an information service.
For instance:
Let’s say a shopper is looking for some obscure item that my store doesn’t carry. Like… Poodle Nintendo to keep poodles occupied on long car trips.
Customer (wandering the aisles of the Nintendo section): Hey, ahhh… you keep that Poodle Nintendo… that thing that keeps Poodles occupied on long car trips?
Me (wondering if such a product even exists): No, sorry, Sir, we don’t carry Poodle Nintendo. We have regular Nintendo; maybe you’d like that for your non-poodle travelling companions?
Customer: Do you know where I can get Poodle Nintendo?
Because, obviously, I’m an expert on stuff I don’t sell.
Then again, maybe there is a reason so many people ask this. Maybe I’m getting unreasonably indignant about the expectations the general public has of me. Maybe I just give off that all-knowing aura.
I dunno, I’d take this as a compliment. “Wow, your store is so comprehensive that I really did think you had every fruit in the world here!”
I admit to doing this. When I do this, it is out of a desperate hope that you, being smarter than me in all matters of things Nintendo, might know of a comrade-in-retail whome I could go see and get this ultra-rare Poodle Nintendo I’m searching for. I wouldn’t ask you about the details of the Poodle Nintendo, but maybe you know who I could ask…?
I’m guilty of this as well and I go out of my way to avoid being an annoying customer. When I worked retail, I was aware of what other stores were around and had a vague idea of what they sold. I figure other salespeople know this kind of stuff as well. Especially if I’m out of town and don’t know what other stores are around. And 9 times out of 10, the salesperson knew where else I could find what I was looking for.
Of course, I’m always super nice and polite when I ask. ;j
I used to work at Kinko’s Copy Center, and we used to have people come in and want for example - Color Copies - and I would tell them it was 1.49 (or whatever the cost was) and the customer would say Office Depot will copy them for .99, and I would be like in my mind GO THERE THEN.
They would be like can’t you match that?, and I would say no I’m sorry that is the Price. Then in a snit because they did not get there way, as they leave they would say "I’ll go to Office Depot and get my Copies made. And I would say, Have a Nice Night, because it was after 5:00, and Office Depot closes at 5:00.
Well ofcourse people will note the prices of things are cheaper elsewhere if many stores encourage them to ‘price match’ (if that’s what you call it) or if you give discounts as a matter of course, offer coupons or allow them to haggle.
The tag price is never going to be what they will have to pay for the item in their heads.
I personally can’t stand this (unless ofcourse we’re talking developing nations, when haggling is required and prices are cheap to start with) and personally grateful that in NZ, we mostly don’t do this. All tax is already included in the price and we usually don’t tip, so the price tag is what you actually have to pay.
I do understand, but as a college student working for minimum wage back at Kmart, I found it hard to be sympathetic, when I didn’t have much money either, and people would ask me for discounts I wasn’t authorized to give.
I really and truly sympathize with the need to save money-but sometimes people get really nasty and selfish in their attempts to do so.
I mentioned this in the Pit thread this spawned, but I’ll share it here too. Numerous times, we’d catch customers (as in, see them doing it) pouring coffee on their items, then sidling up to the register with wide, innocent eyes and saying “This is damaged, can you take anything off of it?” because we had a very small (10%) discount we could give on damaged books.
I think I opened the retail can of worms. Love it.
Every customer I had tonight was pleasant and nice (I was thinking of the thread the whole time, waiting to save up a story to post)…except for one rude phone call. Identifying details have been changed, because this is a customer who gets frequent deliveries from us:
“Hi, this is Jane Doe at 123 Drunkass Street.”
“Hi, I’m sorry but we’re not taking any more delivery orders for the night.”
“Why not?” *(very snappish) *
“Because the delivery man has gone home for the night.”
click
DUDE. I’d be happy to take an order for tomorrow morning! Or perhaps you could find someone else to pick the stuff up for you? At that point the store was still open for 2 more hours. There’s just no need to be so rude by hanging up on me. Blech.
A little bit off the subject: why did your delivery driver go home when the store was open for 2 more hours? That doesn’t make any sense. I’d ask why, as well.
Well, I’m sure if Mrs. Doe would have asked politely sara would’ve been more than happy to explain it. (I’m going out on a limb here sara; confirmation?).
“Well, he had to be home early tonight for a family obligation”
“Well, he wasn’t feeling well and took off early”
“Well, we get so few delivery calls during these late hours that it doesn’t pay to keep him on the clock”
OR EVEN
“Well, I’m really not at liberty to discuss his reasons for needing to leave when he does”
Instead, our customer gave a very snappish “Why not?”, followed by an abrupt hangup.
It just feels so much better in general to have positive exchanges with customers rather than negative ones, regardless of what info was even exchanged.
There is a sign by our cash register that says “We do not mark prices down on request.” At least once a day, someone laughs about that sign, and how ridiculous it would be for anyone to argue about our prices.
At least twice a day, someone argues about the prices.
My favorite request is - “Can’t you do any better?” As if our prices are a direct result of my own personal failure, and if I just put in that extra effort, I can make things cheap enough to make everyone happy. Unfortunately, I can’t do any better. This is as good as it gets for me. Sorry.
(hmm… what sort of day did look!ninjas have today?)
That wasn’t what my post was about, moe, that would be why I said a little bit off the subject.
I wasn’t defending the callers rudeness, I was asking why a delivery driver would take off 2 hours before close.