You Have To Be An Asshole To Save Money...?

The BBQ Pit
41

I used to quite enjoy customers like this, probably because as far as I was concerned, I was the one in the power position. It was just that sort of job, the owner really didn’t need to open the shop at all, he just did it to give me something to do as far as I could see. Nice chap, wore slippers a lot, spent his life being frustrated. He could be very confusing to talk to because you were never sure if he was listening or not. An expert at making customers forget what they wanted to complain about. I feel worse for those who have to take subserviant positions then get yelled at by managers for giving the money.

But for me, I’d spend half my morning desperately in need of entertainment. Then in comes an eejit.

eejit: This book is torn.
me: Yes.
eejit: Is there a discount?
me: (long drink of coffee)
eejit: well, is there?
me: YYYyyyyyyyno.
eejit: But it’s torn!
me: Yes. Yes, it’s torn.
eejit: Why isn’t there a discount?
me: (gazes into eejit’s eyes, playing today’s game, which is pretend to be in love with customers)
eejit: Why isn’t there a discount? I got a discount at Genericbookshop! And don’t tell me you don’t do discounts because I happen to KNOW you gave my friend a discount last week.
me: Mmmmmm.
eejit: I demand to see the owner.

(enter owner, just as bored and frustrated as I am)

eejit: This guy won’t give me a discount.
owner: (long drink of coffee)
eejit: This book is torn. I want a discount.
owner: Eh?
eejit: He won’t give me a discount.
owner: Right.
(silence)
eejit: Will YOU give me a discount?
owner: (long drink of coffee)
eejit: Genericbookshop gave me a discount.
owner: (sincerely) Wow.
me: (awed) That’s pretty cool.
owner: Yeah. Those guys are cool.
eejit: You gave my friend a discount last week and his book wasn’t this badly torn.
owner: (suddenly surprised by eejit’s presence) Sorry, were you talking to me?
eejit: Yes! Why can’t you give me a discount?
me: (holding up charity pencil tops with googly eyes) Have you seen these?
eejit: I don’t want one.
me: No, I know, I’m just saying, they’re good, aren’t they?
eejit: Look, I’m not leaving without speaking to the owner.
owner: (pointing to me) He’s the owner.
me: Um. Yeah.
eejit: I don’t believe you.

And so forth. Eventually the eejit would leave, as we complained that he had promised he wouldn’t leave without speaking to the owner. Looking back, that was one of the best, best jobs I have ever had. I really didn’t appreciate it at the time.

The trick, if you have the space and the authority, is to get more relaxed the more angry they get. Drives them crazy.

42

The owner’s name didn’t happen to be Bernard Black, did it? :slight_smile:

43

Sadly not, that’d make me Manny, and I haven’t the hair. Anyway there wasn’t an endearingly ditzy but reasonably do-able woman hanging around.

44

It sure as hell wasn’t Louis Black! :wink:

45

When I was in the process of getting fivorced and my ex and I were splitting up possessions, we decided to have a garage slae to get rid of the tons of kid stuff and things we had lying around. Needless to say I was not having a good time at the sale and my fuse was practically nonexistent.

I had a mirror in a nice frame that was priced at 20 bucks, well below the 500 it had cost ( it was a really nice mirror, bevelled, large, with a great frame but neither of us wanted it). Still $20 was a steal and I wasn’t going to budge on the price. THis woman kept coming back, three times in all throughout the day and offering me 5 dollars for it so she could haul it off in her Mercedes. She was getting increasingly nasty and annoying with me and by the third go around I had had it.

So I reached over to the table with a bunch of my old hand tools for sale, picked out a 28 oz. Estwing framing hammer and methodically beat the mirror into tiny shards. Then I told her she could have it for free and I would throw in a tube of mirror mastic and some carpenters glue:)

Best 20 bucks I ever spent.

46

Man! Next time you have a garage sale, hire a bouncer.

47

I’ve only haggled if something was damaged, or if it was marked wrong. For example, a book I purchased had been marked two dollars, on the BOOK-but it was wrong. I got it for that price.

Another time, I was buying a doll from the display case at Toys R Us. The shoes were missing, it seemed, so I asked if they could discount it. Sure, no problem. Except while they were trying to change it, I found the shoes taped to the back of the box, so I let them know that I didn’t want the discount. (A lot of people would probably have kept their mouths shut and taken it. I wouldn’t).

Now granted, there ARE some cases where people get jerked around. Once a local boutique had a sale on all sweaters. My mother picked up two, but the clerk tried to say they weren’t sweaters, they were “fall tops.” (Hello, the sticker even said-New Stylish Sweater! or something like that!). She DID argue in this case. And won. (This store has done that kind of thing before).

But when people argue for a discount, just on the basis of getting a discount, they lose all of my sympathy. And often, if they spent the same time and effort to budget their money and shop sensibly, they’d save even MORE than they would with these stupid scams.

And you know what? We remember the nice customers. The nice ones would get the inside information on good deals and sales. The asshole ones wouldn’t. I’d go the extra mile for the people I liked. They probably made out with a lot more than the jerks.

48

Once I tried to haggle at a thrift store- I saw a gorgeous full-length red coat in the window that not only fit me, but still had the tags. This was a wool winter coat. Someone would have gotten it if I waited , so tried to I haggle down from the original 20 dollars to the $17.53 I had in my pocket. Didn’t work- they held firm, but I got them to hold it in the back till I had the rest later that day.

But those are circumstances where it is almost expected- to pull off those 'savvy shopping" tricks in department stores is the height of assholishness. it just raises prices and causes inconvenience for the non- “savvy” customers. I’ve seen people have to eat the cost of non-returnable formalwear (got pregnant before event- it no longer fit by the date). All because of the people who wear and return.

49

Oh VOMIT! :eek:

I worked at Walgreens for about a year. My managers were doormats; they returned anything and everything, no receipt required. The two items that stick out in my mind were a burnt-out lightbulb and a 2-liter bottle of Jewel brand soda (remember, we were at Walgreens). I refused to budge on prices unless something was labeled wrong (some of the other employees were morons and would hang the discount stickers up willy-nilly). Sometimes the customers insisted that I call the manager. In that case the manager would usually give the customer the lower price just to get them to leave. I always hated that because it undermined what little authority I had with the customer. I always felt like the customer would stick out their tongue and say, “See?” if they could get away with it.

50

Barry? Is that you?

Returns are a corner of retail Hell that I don’t have to deal with, because we won’t take 'em. Flat out. It hasn’t stopped people from trying. One of our customers, a woman well known for driving us all crazy, tried to return a bowl she’d bought from us. It had a crack in it. Now, for one thing, we don’t take returns. We never have. For another, she’d had the bowl for something like two months at that point, so it wasn’t impossible for her to have cracked the bowl on her own. I offered to let her consign the bowl again, to see if anyone wanted to buy it. I think she wound up making a dollar for her pains.

51

That is truly unbelievable. I wonder how far they would go? Could someone just bring in a rock from the parking lot and tell them “I bought this here. It was $10.” and get a refund?

52

We didn’t object to selling a damaged article of clothing at a discount…what we objected to was someone damaging the clothing (like the woman who would take clothes into the dressing room, remove a button and secrete it in her purse or pocket) in hopes of getting a discount. This happens a lot more often than you’d think. Now, we did inspect the stock when we put it back from the dressing rooms, or moved items from one area to another, and when we found a damaged article we’d usually discount it and put it on the sale rack. Stuff on the sale rack was sold strictly as-is, no returns even for store credit.

Oh, I forgot one instance in my earlier post. We had a group of teenage girls come in, wanting to try on wedding veils (we had a sign in our window advertising that yes, we carried wedding gowns and veils, though we didn’t have them out on the floor). These girls were too young to be getting married, apparently they just wanted to play dress-up. They were also eating ice cream cones. The cones were full of gooey chocolate ice cream. Now, I personally am a big fan of gooey chocolate ice cream, but wedding veils are white or ivory. I asked, pointedly, if they planned on buying any veils they stained, or indeed any veils at all. They said they were “thinking of buying a veil”. I asked who was getting married, and when. Ummmm, they just wanted to try on veils. I told them to take their gooey ice cream out of our store, and that if they wanted to BUY veils, it’s fine, but I was gonna have to see cash money up front before I was gonna let them try even on one.

They left, muttering about how rude I was. My boss was checking in a box of clothes, grinning her head off.

53

Yeah…I’d probably have to run and do the price check though. :stuck_out_tongue: :wink:

54

I agree wholeheartedly. Like I said, behaviour like that, and that of the lady in the inside edition piece just ruin it for real bargain hunters and hagglers. Meaning those who are polite, don’t con, don’t nag, and expect that the bargain they get will be a bargain because they’re willing to accept flaws, or use on the item. etc.

I especially agree with the OP about the tiny amounts of the “bargains”. Sheesh, these people never heard “time is money”??

55

Another appropriate karma would be years from now, when she’s in an assisted living facillity.

SavvyShopper: “Nurse - my IV bag looks funny. It’s all cloudy with little things floating in it” (puts on glasses) “And the name on the bag isn’t me - it’s that guy who died down the hall last month.”

Nurse: “Golly, you’re right. Tell you what - we’ll knock 20 bucks off your bill, and throw in an extra pudding cup tonight!”

56

When I was a Wal-Martian, I recall two returns in particular. Once when I was at the service desk picking up some stuff, a customer returned USED sheets. Well used. Old sheets. Not “took 'em out, wasn’t what I wanted” sheets, but “I just pulled these off the bed” sheets. No reciept, of course. Fucking GROSS.

Another time I got a call from the service desk asking how much this designer cologne cost so they could do a refund. (no receipt) I informed them that we did not, and never had, sold that brand of cologne. So the girl is all flustered and says, “Well, can you guess based on the stuff you DO have?” Um…yeah. whatevah.

57

These people are just unbelievable. I was in line behind a man in the express lane at the grocery store–he argued with the cashier for a long time over whether she shortchanged him by a nickel. Okay, so maybe he grew up in the Depression, but that’s not a good reason for making a whole line of people wait while you give the cashier a hard time over a measly 5 cents. I was about to give him a dime and tell him to get out when the cashier gave him his precious nickel, and he left. It’s really just not worth the time and stress to argue over little things like that.

ME

58

I don’t haggle, but I will ask if there is a discount if an article of clothing has a broken zipper or strap. I’m looking for a dress to wear to this thing I have to go to, and I found the perfect dress. It’s gorgeous, it was my size, but not only was one strap torn, the zipper was completely busted. I asked the sales lady if there was any kind of discount, because of all of the flaws, and she said no. Oh well, I’m not going to push it. I just put it back on the rack. Good luck, though, getting someone else to buy it!

59

I used to work in a mid-range jeans store. We had a “zero refunds” policy. I once had a woman walk up to me and say; “Why don’t you want adults shopping here?” I was all like; “Zuh?”, so she smiled and said in an overly-measured voice; “I can understand teenagers buying things, wearing them, then returning them. But grownups are people who want to be able to get their money back, sometimes with good reason. So why don’t you want business from grownups?”

I wish I could have shown her this thread.

It’s been two years and I still want to punch her fifteen times.