An Indecisive Customer

Today we were short-handed yet had double the shoppers we usually have. (Is it a full moon, or what? All month the craziest people have been coming in and calling.)

So it was extremely busy, we were short-handed, and it was shift-change time. The person who made the schedule screwed it up in a big way, so most of the morning people left at EXACTLY the same time that the evening crew arrived. Because the morning cashiers had to count out their registers before they left, we only had one register open when everyone in the county decided to come into the store at the same time. The line grew, but everyone was being fairly patient as I helped the drawer-transition process go a little faster. They saw that I was aware of the problem and was trying to fix it as quickly as possible.

Near the beginning of all of this chaos an older (but not THAT old that he should be so out of it) man came to the registers to ask for someone to unlock a case of expensive items for him. Great. I went, asking questions to find out what he wanted, but he didn't really know. He finally decided (as the register line was growing) and we headed back to the front so he could pay (since it's an expensive item I can't let the customer have it until after it's paid for). So we got back to the front (where the line to check out was extending even more and I feared a riot might break out) and the man decided that he wanted a DIFFERENT item in the locked case. So we returned to the case, got what he wanted, and returned to the front to finish the registers so that we could open more of them. The man paid, walked out the door, and then walked right back in because he changed his mind—he wanted the original item.

At that point I was at the very brink of opening a register and couldn't stop in the middle so I said I'd help him as soon as I could. After all, should I stop what I'm doing to help the one person, or open the register to take care of the 8 people waiting in the single line? (Oh, I guess I didn't mention that my most incompetent employee happened to be running that single register. I didn't have a choice. She could mess up less there than on the sales floor.)

I opened the register, rang out 5 people in the same amount of time that she rang up 3, and the line was gone. While I was doing that, I could see the man pacing the floor impatiently. Then he got in the end of the line. When it was his turn, I said, "That's right, you want the {other item}" like I had forgotten. "No," he replied, "I'm tired of waiting so I just want a refund." He said it like since we made him wait, then he wasn't going to spend money in our store. Did he not see all the people in the store?! It took longer to do the refund than it would have taken to get the item and do an exchange!!

Fine, I'll give you a refund. The thing is, that particular type of item is often returned because people can't be bothered to read the directions. We often can't resell the items because the package is in pieces or missing or one of the pieces is missing or the person scratched it trying to get the battery in. Since he couldn't even decide which item he wanted or understand the rather different purposes for each, then it's probably good that he didn't get it home and render the item unsellable before returning it.