2/21/2010... As Well

This experience also happened on the day after we got back from our trip, but yesterday's blog was long enough that I decided to make each their own separate post. I also created a visual aid for this one via my leet skills with Paint.

Enjoy!

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~ A woman approached me with three items to return: a $7 pair of boy's jean pants and two, large $50 area rugs. Lo and behold, she didn't have a receipt for any of them. Because of the cost of the two rugs, I didn't have the authority to approve their return, so I scampered off to find a supervisor. By a stroke of luck, there was one nearby, and I quickly ran the situation by her. The super really didn't seem to like the idea, but she said that I could go ahead and do the return as long as I processed each item in a separate transaction. Returning to the counter, I informed the customer of my supervisor's decision and in my explanation, I made sure to make note that our computers only allow a certain number of returns for a specified period of time per any given ID number. Slightly to my surprise, the woman calmly understood this and seemed a little too proud of the fact that she "always kept her receipts" and that this would "be the first time she'd had to return something without one."

The pants, I would be able to process by myself, but the rugs would require a supervisor to physically come to the counter and type in their numbers to approve the return of them. Just in case there were any hiccups, I went ahead and started with the easiest item. As you'll soon find out, this was a very good idea. After quickly working through the return transaction for the jeans, I politely asked for the woman's ID. Upon receiving it, I immediately took note of the fact that the whole card had a large bend diagonally through it. Almost too conveniently, the bent plastic obscured one of the numbers that I needed to type in to finish the return. This is where my awesome skills in Paint come into play.

Yes, I know it doesn't look exactly like a Texas driver's license because I didn't intend it to. The dark gray line across it is, of course, to represent the obscuring bend in the plastic. The woman spoke up quite readily at my inspection of the card and stated that the last two digits of the ID number were 60.

Now, having had the "privilege" of looking at these IDs day in and day out, I will swear to you as I am breathing right now that those last two digits were 50. The "6" she was referring to had a definite straight top on it instead of a loop curving back down. She stuck to her digits when I mentioned that it looked like a 5, but I could tell that she wasn't going to back down. So, instead of arguing, I pulled out my ace-in-the-hole: I informed her that I could not accept the ID because the obscured numbers rendered the card invalid. Defeated, she gathered her things and left.

In the end, I truly believe that she was attempting to be fraudulent. For all I know, she may have been able to walk out of the store with those rugs without paying for them only to later try and return them for store credit. With a maxed out ID, she may have purposefully bent her card in an attempt to trick me. Whether one or both of those ideas apply to this particular woman is purely speculation, but both are still very probable.