Four in One

Maybe I'm just lowering my standards, or possibly I was just really irritable yesterday, but I've got four, separate mini-occasions to share from yesterday. None of them are really long enough to blog about by themselves, but together, I find them worth mentioning.

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~ To start, I got to "play" with glass a lot. And by "play," I mean "clean up and prevent others from hurting themselves with it." One of the bulbs in a two-pack of long, florescent lights had busted and was pushed out of the way. Why no one else had the initiative to clean it up, I have no idea. After I'd done so and attacked the remaining pack (which still contained half the broken bulb and lots of glass) with lots and lots of tape, I placed the item in our designated basket of things that won't be put back on the shelves. When doing this, I moved a box of glass cups out of the way only to find that the box sounded as if someone had drop-kicked it across a football field. The folded cardboard had plenty of small exit points and nothing done to seal the container, either. It got attacked with tape, too. In the end, I succeed in avoiding any glass injuries on my part. Yay.

~ Next, I had another customer with a whole bunch of little things to return without the receipt. All of the items she had were things specifically known to get stolen... a lot. She must have lifted some of it from a different store, though, because half of the items wouldn't scan. Over-all, I declined the return with a big, fat "Nuh-Uh." We keep similar products of the ones that weren't in our computer, and I'd guesstimate them costing over $100 for the small handful. That's not even including the ones that I could check the price on. She had a total of around $160 in items we are just not allowed to take back without a receipt. The reason this attempted return is so mentionable is because she walked off without the bunch that wouldn't scan. Anyone who would have actually spent that much on those items wouldn't just leave them in the store. Ebay, friends, family, something would have been better than just leaving a legitimate purchase behind. She had to have stolen them and the fact that they weren't in our computer made them useless to her. Its as simple as that.

~ Also, in my list of Do's and Don'ts When Interacting With Cashiers and Customer Service, I specifically mention, in my list of Customer Service Don'ts, that it is disliked when customers, "Act as if [they've] been giving a blessing from God if there are no other customers in line when [they] arrive." Well, that's exactly what happened yesterday... multiple times. In fact, it bothered me enough that I started keeping count. Yes, I'm that awesome. The grand total is five. In one day, five separate people felt the need to mention that it was so great the service desk area was empty. It was raining ALL DAY!! It is a very consistent thing that much fewer people want to return something while its raining, or even shop for that matter. Think, people, think!

~ And, last but not least, I discovered a gentleman who could operate without his brain. I was walking back up to the front of the store when a pleasant sir approached me. He wanted to know where he could find plastic, outdoor, lawn tables. Assuming he's already checked, the only answer I felt I could give him was to, "look in the garden center area since that's where most of the outdoor stuff, short of sporting items, are kept. If they're not there, we probably hadn't gotten any in yet." When I mentioned this, his eyes lit up as if I'd just told him where to find the lost city of Atlantis. He had not, in fact, checked the garden center area. He didn't even know we had one. WHAT SUPERSTORE DOESN'T HAVE A GARDENING AREA!?!?

2/22/2010

What I've got in store today isn't really a rant, but I definitely found it amusing enough to mention. On this past Monday, a co-worker, "Katy," had the service desk covered, so I was on a regular register for most of the day.

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~ An older woman came up to my register with just two, large items in her basket. All she had was a bag of plant fertilizer and a roughly 2ft x 2ft, sturdy, glass-topped lawn table. After scanning I'd scanned both items, the woman looked at her total with shocked surprise. Upon inquiry, we found that the table had rung up for far more than she expected. The price it rang up for was $20.00 while she stated that a sign by the stack of tables, from where she got her's, displayed that it should have only cost about $6. The supervisor Monica was nearby, so I went out on a limb and asked if she'd check into the discrepancy for me. To my relief, she accepted the mission and headed off to the gardening area to find out what was going on. In the meantime, the woman paid for the fertilizer and moved off to the side so that I could check out other customers while waiting for my supervisor to return.

When she got back, Monica had with her the sign that the older woman had been referring to. It had, in fact, been propped up near the $20.00 tables and also displayed the price $6.98. Because of this, my super decided to go ahead and give the woman the table for the amount on the incorrectly placed price sign. During this time, I was still in the middle of checking out a different customer's items, so Monica led the woman to the customer service desk to quickly pay for the table there. Apparently, along the way, my super took a second glance at the sign she was holding and realized that it didn't have a decimal on it. The price it was displaying wasn't $6.98, but actually $698.00. The older woman was not dissuaded by this information and insisted that she still be given the table for $6.98. Since it was an honest enough mistake made by both of them at first glance, Monica relented and still agreed to still discount the table for her.

The epiphany over the price on the display happened during their walk up to the service desk, so my co-worker there still had no idea of what the situation was. Monica placed the sign on the counter as they arrived and reached for the table to make it easier to scan. Before anyone could explain what was going on, Katy looked down at the display price and said, "$698.00 for a table?!" That was apparently the final straw. The customer threw her arms up in the air, exclaimed, "Forget it! I just don't want the table anymore!" and left with only the fertilizer.

I found out the rest of the story because I noticed the table was still at the service desk when I returned later to send Katy on her lunch break. The sign that was the cause of all the fuss was most likely from one of the larger lawn sets that the store has available. All in all, the woman really should have known the price she thought she was getting the table for was too good to be true. Even my honey agrees that you'd be hard-pressed to find a glass-topped anything for under $10.00.