You don't carry it?!

A man asked me for "this product" (while holding up a 50 ounce bottle) in a 10 ounce bottle. There was no space on the shelf for it so I was 99% sure that we no longer carried it. I checked with another employee and found that we had NEVER carried that item in that size. When I told the man this he was indignant.

"Don't tell me that!! I buy it here every month!" To his wife..."Can you believe this? I buy it here all the time but she's telling me that they've NEVER carried it!"

I showed him the industrial-strength carpet cleaner in the 50 and 100 ounce sizes, to hear him complain that he would never use that much of it. I explained that most people who need a carpet cleaner that strong need a large quantity of it, as well, the reason we carried the sizes that we do.

"I don't need a strong cleaner. This is just for my home. Why would I want a strong cleaner?!"

Then it dawned on me.....he wanted the home-strength carpet cleaner, which DOES come in a 10-ounce size. At that point I was needed to perform a management function so I asked another employee to show him to the correct product. That employee later told me that the man asked him if I was new since I didn't know anything about the products that we carry. ??? The man apparently never understood that he had been asking for the wrong product.

{We also may or may not carry carpet cleaner. OK, we don't. This product substitution doesn't make quite as much sense as Monday's.}