Coupons

What is up with the people lately? Everyone who was supposed to work was at the store today, it was a slow morning, but come noon we were swamped. I'm not talking just a busy Saturday; I'm talking the day before Christmas. Two-thirds through the day we had made our sales goal for THE ENTIRE DAY. I had no way of anticipating so many customers; I would have scheduled more people otherwise!

All the registers were open, some with floor associates or managers running them. I was at one of them, getting people through as quickly as possible, doing returns as needed, keeping things under control. A lady came up to my register and started counting out her coupons, all 10 of them. I looked into her cart and she had the same item so I picked up the coupon to read it carefully (as I had never seen that one before). Most coupons we take say one coupon per customer, so I wanted to make sure what the terms were on these. She got all snotty with me, saying that she's in all the time and we "always" take them. I explained that I had to read them to make sure they were OK because otherwise it would come directly out of my paycheck. After only a couple of seconds (while I was reading the lines and lines and lines of small print) she continued by throwing out the names of some former managers who "ALWAYS take the coupons."

Customers in our store try to con us all the time. Insisting to the new cashier that we take expired coupons (we don't), trying to use mail-in rebates as coupons, using coupons on the wrong items, etc. One guy even scanned a coupon into his computer to change the expiration date and then printed it out. Since it was a competitor's coupon, it took us a while to catch on. He got $50 or even $100 in free merchandise before we figured out what he was doing. He's now banned from our store. Sometimes you have to buy 6 of an item to get $1 off, or buy 3 get 1 free or any number of different deals that can be confusing to both consumer and cashier. Reading the small print is necessary.

So once I finished reading the small print the lady practically threw one bag up on the counter and said, "I have 10 of these." Wondering if that was accurate, I asked, "Are they all the same?" "That's what I said, wasn't it?" I leaned down to look in her cart and saw that at least one item was different. "They're all the same price," she continued. "I realize that, but that one {pointing} is different, so I have to ring it in too to keep our inventory accurate. Are there any more like that?"

She got extremely rude at that point as she started throwing the bags around the cart, "That one's the same, that one's the same, that one's the same. Nine of these, and one of those." "So not ten of the one, then?" I WISHED I could say. I scanned the items in, took the coupons off, then she paid. As she was walking out the door she said "You suck, bitch." Yeah? I notice you didn't say that to my face. In fact, I didn't even hear it, but a couple of cashiers did. My former manager told me that if a customer started insulting her personally or using foul language, she made them leave. Sounds good to me.