I read a rant on reddit about retail customers and the complainer ended up summarizing with “customers don’t look at pictures and they don’t read”. I have a case like that just popped up in my online store. Customer bought something completely different from what she wanted because she didn’t look closely at the pictures and didn’t read the description. She bought an accessory to a product instead of the product itself. And now she’s all “is this broken or is something missing?”
Sheesh
I feel you. I have an online etsy store that sells craft books - only books. “Books” is in my name and in the url.
I’m probably lucky in that in over a thousand orders, I’ve only had a couple of people go “I thought I was buying X, not instructions on how to make X”
OK, here’s another one:
Impatient White Guys - stop trying to get your wife arrested.
Yeah, let me explain that. You get a couple checking out (often middle aged or older but there are younger pairings). The man clearly wants to get the hell out of Dodge. He’s loading the cart with bagged stuff as fast as I can scan and bag it. As soon as the last item is loaded he’s off to the [del]races[/del] door. Meanwhile, his wife is back at the register still paying for the goods.
The problem comes in if for some reason there’s a problem with payment. Maybe the credit card is rejected. Maybe the wife is short $20.
What we now have is a situation where someone has just left the store with a cart full of goods that are not paid for, and the remaining person has no means to pay for it.
The situation that sticks out most in my mind was the couple where the husband had dashed off and the wife was left with a card that simply was not accepted by the store’s register. Security eventually intervened. They were polite, but they would not allow the woman to leave the store. Well, they actually wouldn’t stop her, but they did say that if she left without paying the local police would be notified and shoplifting charges would be involved (the total was several hundred dollars). The little old lady was in tears. Clearly, it was not her intention to steal but even so her husband had left with unpaid stuff and she was the half of the couple store security actually had contact with.
Twenty minutes later the man storms back into the store, enraged because he’s been waiting. When he finds out his wife is more or less being held he REALLY gets angry. He’s shouting that he’ll sure, he’ll do this or that, wants the store (? The entire store? Was not clear on this) arrested for kidnapping his wife, etc. By this time the local police have arrived and everyone adjourned to an office so as not to make a public display. No one was arrested so I presume payment was somehow arranged.
I have noticed that only white men do this. Women couples/groups don’t do this. Impatient Asians will walk off without their receipts, but they do pay before anyone leaves. Black people are downright fanatical about both making sure payment is final and asking for the receipt, making sure all items have a bag and/or marked as sold, and so forth. And it’s certainly not ALL white guys. But the only people who do this “leave before the payment is final” thing are white and male.
This is what “white male privilege” looks like.
Somehow, they think the rule of “you must pay for stuff before leaving the store” doesn’t apply to them. Every time they do that they are breaking the law, and they don’t get caught on it because their wife is completing the transaction and the store very much wants the money more than it wants to chase after some cranky old bastard who can’t wait a half a minute longer. But if the store doesn’t get the money it’s theft.
I really, really wish these guys would stop doing this. One day, somebody’s wife is going to be arrested because she was part of a couple where one party waltzed out the door with unpaid goods and she’s the one still in the store to be arrested. It might not be at my store (where management and the security people try their best not to terrorize little old ladies with inpatient husbands) but it’s going to happen somewhere, if it hasn’t already.
It strikes me that the security people could walk with the wife to the parking lot to find the husband. Or, if he has a cellphone (not a guaranteed thing with an older couple), he could be called.
I don’t understand why they’d have to stand around for 30 minutes, he’s right outside.
Why not arrest the person who actually left the store?
Security can’t arrest anybody. They can detain temporarily somebody trying to leave with unpaid good but the IWG did not have the goods with him and was already outside the store. What are they going to do, frogmarch the female half outside and say, “Point out your man so we can arrest him (too)?” I’m sure that’d go over great once the couple got back home.
They wouldn’t have to “frogmarch” anyone. They could just say "let’s walk out to the parking lot, find you’re husband and see if we can work this out.
If he doesn’t have an alternative means to pay then repossess the groceries. If they fight you on this then you can rightfully call the police. Even if they leave, you’ll have the license number.
Because he wasn’t there. He’d left the store.
People who try to pay with American Express in a store that does not take AmEx are stupid. Particularly when they give you a second AmEx card and ask you to take it “just this once.”
I had a guy who, after I rang up his cart of toys, say “Oh, I forgot my card. I just take this cart out to the parking lot and get it.” I’m sure I set a new record for coming out from behind the counter, grabbing the cart at the front, and saying very loudly “No without paying you won’t.” And guess what? As two of the male aisle workers walked up, he suddenly “found” his card. They escorted him out of the store.
Never seems like these people have cellphones. Probably because if they did have cellphones the wife would call immediately and say “hey, my card didn’t work, will you come back?”
No, he wasn’t “right outside”, he had already gone back to his car in an acre of parking lot, which, this time of year, is full to the brim.
Because he’s left the store. He’s gone.
Actually, we’re allowed to call the police on ANYONE disruptive or acting suspicious. The store is, after all, private property. We have in fact had the police arrest people out on the sales floor (the most recent one flung herself on the ground screaming I DIDN’T TAKE ANYTHING! I DIDN’T TAKE ANYTHING! No, not this time honey, we didn’t let you wander the store long enough to have that happen. We did have her very clearly on videotape all the other times she’d stolen from us, though.
Which is why there was a warrant out for her arrest.) We prefer not to, but once he’s left the store with unpaid goods it’s theft and he can be arrested regardless of whether or not we get the goods back because he’s committed a crime by stealing.
Again, we prefer not to do this in a situation where it seems clear there is no intended malice.
The reason it’s only white guys doing this is because a lot of men from minorities would be scared spitless that either security or the police would abuse them if they were in that situation (a few of my non-white male coworkers have even stated this out loud). White guys assume “this can be worked out”. Yes, yes it can but the fact remains they did commit theft by leaving a store with unpaid for goods.
Which is why they’re even more annoying when they come back in roaring about being mistreated. Um… no, you’re NOT the wronged party here, IWG.
My driver, who was Chinese (and presumably still is) used to do this all the time. I’d still be paying the Metro clerk, and he’d be halfway out to the car. The strange thing is, Metro had receipt checkers, but they never interfered with him. When I’d go to Metro by myself, they wouldn’t ever let me leave without a check (and I didn’t speak enough Chinese to make a fuss over it).
I’m not sure what would have happened had my payment not cleared. I doubt that I would have understood.
Driver? Driver of what?
I was at a grocery store the other day. There were two women buying 2 cases (!) of tofu. The store has a policy that if you buy case lots you get 10% off. The women just couldn’t understand why if they were buying 2 cases, they didn’t get 20% off. 10% + 10% must equal 20%. They had calculated how much the bill should be before they came to the store, and were sure the poor clerk was wrong. I pointed out if it worked that way, they could just buy 10 cases and it would be free.
Math doesn’t work the way you think it works.
StG
Form a co-op with 9 other people and get all of your groceries for free!
I fucking hate this. Every supermarket and convenience store where I live demands ID now.
I am sixty years old, and I’m pretty sure I look every minute of it. But they all do it. Often they insist that it is the law. It is not.
I particularly object to having my license scanned. That’s intrusive. I do not want them to have a record of my license. There’s no need for it. I suspect that it’s because they don’t trust their cashiers, and the store/chain/whatever management requires a scanned license with every purchase of alcohol, but their lack of trust in their cashiers shouldn’t be my problem.
Oddly, actual liquor stores (which, in New York, sell hard liquor and wine, but not beer), never ask me for ID.
New York City, in all the big chain drug/convenience stores (CVS, Duane Reade, Rite Aid). For purchases of beer. And other stuff, for all I know, but I’ve only encountered it when buying beer.
I hate it.
And there’s no reason on earth to card me (see my post above). I’m convinced they’re harvesting data.
Add one more guy; the store will start paying you!
They are. And that data is being hacked.
Around here most of the liquor stores have a sign on their door that they check ID’s on EVERYBODY, please have ID ready at checkout.
There ARE laws giving age limits for purchasing certain items. Cashiers and stores that fail to comply with these laws face severe punishments - so what is a cashier to do? I agree, there are cases where it is obvious someone is old enough and at my particular employer cashiers do not have to ID such people. You’re right, some stores require it from their employees even if the law does not.
So those of you old folks who shouldn’t be ID’d - what’s the solution? OK, sure, we don’t ID obvious old farts but how is the cashier supposed to avoid being fired/fined/jailed for selling to someone underage, someone, say, 20 years old who looks a bit older, outside of asking for proof of age? And if you say those folks should be carded are you saying it’s OK to keep their information, but not yours?
Yeah, there probably are stores leaning on cashiers to card everyone and scan the ID’s to suck data out of you. I’m not convinced every store is doing that - for one thing, at my store we’ll accept ID’s like passports that we don’t have a way to scan for data. Data capture is NOT the point of ID checks at my store, it’s to make sure we comply with minimum age laws on certain purchases. Really. That’s the reason. That’s why we don’t require cashiers to card obvious old farts. Don’t want your information tracked? OK, buy your booze at our store and if you are clearly an old geezer and pay cash we won’t be able to track anything on you.
Now, if you buy pseudoephedrine at the pharmacy absolutely yes your information is being kept, sent to a database of purchases. They’ll tell you that up front if you ask, sometimes even if you don’t. That’s to avoid people going from pharmacy to pharmacy buying that stuff for amateur chemists to cook into meth. Buy small amounts nobody cares. Buy too much you will be getting a knock on your door.
I got gas the other night and when I went inside to prepay the clerk warned me immediately that they only had 87. Fine by me so I went out to pump. They had big signs on the pumps, too.
The lady on the other side of the pump from me clearly missed the sign and was screaming about it taking forever to pump…One of the clerks had to exit the store to tell her they were out of premium. Her " Why didn’t you put signs up?!" She pulled out of there like a bat out of hell.