YES EVERY SINGLE ONE

My friend the manager of another store called to ask about something. In the course of our conversation she mentioned that her closing manager somehow lost the key to one of their fire exits. So her store was open but the fire exit was locked........whoa, totally illegal. If the fire marshall showed up, that'd be a huge fine.

Some customers just can't read. A woman asked me THREE TIMES if various items were on sale. Are the blue ones on sale, too? What about this large size? Is this style on sale, too? YES!!!! ALL of the ___ are on sale, as the sign clearly states. ALL OF THEM.

Little Shoplifter

There's nothing like working a double, especially when it's the busiest day of the week as far as incoming merchandise. Luckily today's shipment was smaller than normal. Boss's trip is halfway through so soon I'll have a little rest.

To liven up the day, I had a mother bring in her little 5-year-old shoplifter. They'd been in the day before and he'd taken a small item worth a couple of dollars. A former law enforcement officer herself, she flipped out and the kid's probably traumatized for life. He apologized, returned the item, and I gave him a lecture using my sternest voice and straightest face about how important it is to not steal so the police don't take you to jail. I tried to make the point sink in while not being too rough. After all, theft is a real problem. If I can scare one kid into not stealing, great.

Serial Returner

An hour to close and a woman comes in with two HUGE bags of stuff to return. I was finishing an exchange for someone else so she dropped off the bags and said she'd be back later. Wait! Do you have a receipt? "They're in the bag," she said, as she continued out the door.

I thought it was strange, but I didn't recognize her at that point. The cashier did. It was the woman with mental issues.

When I finished with the exchange I opened the bags and was knocked over by the smell. What must her house smell like?! I breathed through my mouth as I picked through the contents: open merchandise, visibly used/very worn items with no packaging, expired items, merchandise with packaging more than a year old.........I took a look at the receipts. They were in an envelope........all 50 of them. Some of the receipts were from last year, the year before, all the way back to 2000. Some of the items expired as far back as 2002. (It IS 2006 now, right?)

Very few of the items were in sellable condition, while none were defective, so there was no legitimate reason for the return. There were 4 of the same half-empty item and everything was WAY past the return policy, if you could even find it on the receipts. Further, the last 1~2 years of receipts were exchanges or store credits because she had previously brought items back without a receipt.

I know in the past the then-store manager allowed all of her returns, but stuff that expired years ago?! Multiple packages of the same thing that are half-empty?! She couldn't argue that she didn't like the item, because she bought it on 4 separate occasions!

Complicating things is that about a week ago a man called and explained that he and his wife no longer had need of our products because of some lifestyle changes and asked if he could return certain items. I asked a few questions and said yes. If this is the same couple, then he left out some important parts of his story. "You told me yes on the phone!" isn't going to happen. This is ridiculous.

The written return policy is very rarely followed. Managers are supposed to use their judgment about what to return or not. How stupid is that? If I follow the written policy too closely then the customer gets upset and I get in trouble from the customer service department (and have to do the return anyway). If I deviate too far from the written policy the customer is happy but I get in trouble from the part of the office that processes the returns paperwork (and the store loses money). Before I went any further with this return, I wanted approval from someone higher up. Yes, that's right, pass the buck also means cover your ass.

The store manager is away again, so there's no one higher than me in the store. While the manager is still available for life-and-death, the-store-is-on-fire issues, for other things I go on up to the regional manager. I explained the whole thing to her and how long this customer has been doing this, that it's costing us a lot of money, etc. She agreed with my assessment that it's time for this to stop. She told me to give store credit on the things that were like new and could be resold, but on the expired, open, SMELLY stuff.....NO NO NO. Awesome! We so rarely completely agree!

By the time I went through the merchandise (and then disinfected my hands) and talked with the regional manager it was a half hour until close (when most of the other stores in the area close, too). Twenty 'til, quarter 'til, ten 'til, five 'til, CLOSED. Even though there were no other customers in the store, I waited five minutes to close the registers. I already had bad news that was going to upset the customer; I didn't want her to have any ammunition against me (like claiming that I closed early, which I never do).

We closed the registers, finished all the closing duties, and prepared to leave. The employees were waiting at the front while I checked the back and side doors; just as I got to the front she came up to the door. I told her we were closed and surprisingly she didn't argue and wasn't upset. She said she'd be back "tomorrow" to complete the returns.

Well, it's four days later and still no sign of her. The returned items are divided into two bags, returnable and not, and the "not" bag is double-bagged to keep the contamination from killing us all.

Satisfaction guaranteed.....for how long?

A woman came in to return an item that she bought a year ago. ONE YEAR AGO. I explained that our return policy was X amount of time but since the item was like new I would give her a store credit for the amount.

She began arguing that the item said "satisfaction guaranteed" on it, but when I refused to budge she ended up with a cheaper item (from the same manufacturer) and the remainder in the form of a store credit. Our return policy is somewhat flexible, but a YEAR? Had I done it, the office would most definitely be calling to have a little chat with me.

Less than an hour later the manufacturer of the item called. The woman had called to complain and told them that we wouldn't refund her money and that we had kept the receipt. The customer service rep needed the receipt so he could give the customer her money back. Well, yes I have the receipt but the customer already has her money back, in a manner of speaking. The woman hadn't mentioned that she had gotten merchandise and a store credit for the remainder. The rep was rather surprised and thanked me for the info.

I didn't mention that EVERY SINGLE TIME that woman has shopped in our store, she has had some type of major problem. If I owned the place, I would tell her to find someplace else to shop because considering the amount of time we have to spend on her, we're not making a profit. We make a few bucks here and there, but not enough to cover the headaches she causes.

Poor Planning

Closing procedures.......there are a lot of things to do before we can leave. So in order to go home at any kind of decent hour (since we have customer-friendly hours), we start early. By the time it's a quarter 'til close we have most stuff done and only one register open. Usually, that's OK and totally adequate. But tonight we had four times the normal number of last minute shoppers. I HATE last minute shoppers!!

One woman was having a fit because she "had to get to another store before they close!" They closed at the same time as us.....there was no way she was making it. Not only was she impatient, she also skipped in line, which luckily didn't cause a riot, just some murderous stares. The teenage cashier had already begun ringing her up before I could correct the out-of-turn issue and it would have taken longer to void the started sale than just to continue.

But suddenly her sale wasn't very easy or fast. She was buying something (and accessories) that she really shouldn't have been buying that late at night. It was a totally unnecessary item that required extra paperwork and getting a couple of items that she had missed because she had no idea what she needed because it was an impulse buy that she should have bought earlier in the day! (Did you get all that? I'm too tired to make it any clearer.) Pretend she bought a cell phone with the case but forgot the battery and the charger and then had to sign up for the calling plan and warranty. Well, not quite that much paperwork, but more than what most sales require.

So she's complaining about the wait even though she didn't really have to wait since she butted in line, the customers behind her are killing her with their stares, with a few of the evil looks going to the cashier, a few to me, and a few to the guy cleaning the front.

It being ten 'til close, none of the other customers said anything about opening another register (at least not that I heard). So the paperwork and sale were finally done and the lady rushed out with five minutes left to load her purchases in her car and drive to the other store before they closed. Impossible. The other customers were checked out quickly and efficiently, and amazingly enough, we managed to leave the store on time.