DaveMage said:
In addition to management issues, which can be bad enough, it's amazing the things "customers" try to pull to cheat the stores. "The customer is always right" is SOOOOO not true. Granted, the majority of customers are fine, but that small percent that isn't can really be unbelievable.
The customer is rarely right, you just don't tell them that.
Times that in my retail experience, the customer has been dead wrong:
A kid, obviously in his early teens, comes up to a sales counter and says he wants to return some things, he's got a big bag of merchandise. We have a fairly generous return policy, you don't need a reciept, we just need to scan the bar codes on the product. So, even though he doesn't have a reciept we can take it back. We start scanning and processing the return. It's a mix of things from all over the store: ties, lingerie, a dress, men's shirts, several pairs of jeans, a belt, several pairs of shoes too. It all totals up to well over $1000 in returns. So then we have to ask if they would like it back in the original tender or in store credit. The kid anxiously says "Yeah, tender, I want tender!". So, we push some buttons and ask him to sign on the little digital pad. The reciept prints out, and it's all been credited back to his moms credit card. The kid freaks, and gets angry saying he wanted cash, we have to give him cash, or at least give him the stuff back. Well, the refund & return had already been processed, so we couldn't do that. He angrily went off in a huff. We figured he was returning stuff he thought his family wouldn't miss for drug money.
Someone comes in wanting to return several pairs of very expensive designer jeans. Not only does he not have a reciept, there are no tags at all on the jeans, and they look like they've been worn. There is no way we can accept this as a return, so we tell him we need the reciept or tags. He says he bought them like this just yesterday, from me! (I hadn't worked the two days before this
), and I didn't give him a reciept. We weren't buying it, and he was getting loud and pushy, so we said we'd call security and a manager, but the jeans aren't getting returned without tags. He then insisted that I told him yesterday that it was alright just to bring them in without one. I told him that maybe he was mistaken, since I had not worked in the past two days, and a quick check of the surveilance tapes from yesterday would see who sold him these jeans if he bought them here recently. At that point he grumbling storms off, and a while later we find those jeans abandoned in a dressing room on the other side of the department store.
A man comes in to buy a large amount of clothes, right before closing, with his kids in tow. He insists on paying for the large (several hundred dollar) purchase with a check. The problem is, that the check processing system we use was rejecting his checks outright. A quick look would show why: They were two-party checks from out of state, when his driver's license was from yet another state, none of the addresses matched, and the ID didn't look much like him at all. His kids are constantly whining "This happens every time you shop, dad", and "C'mon dad, not again!". I try to politely tell him that I cannot accept his check because our automated approval system won't accept it, and I cannot override the system, and ask him politely to pay with another means such as cash or a credit card. He accuses me of being discriminatory (I couldn't tell why, he wasn't any minority I could tell) and immediately starts threatening to sue me and the store for not taking his check and for "treating me like this", and demands I get a manager there immediately. Well, I call for a manager, and when one finally shows up (as the store is closing down), he goes off on a tirade about how I refused his check and was being discriminatory and demanded they take my check and I should be fired on the spot. The managers reply was simple and to the point (after he sighed and rolled his eyes): "Sir, we are closing, please exit to the doors beside you. Thank you for shopping [store]" as he picks up the merchandise in question and takes it back to the office for restocking the next day. I put on a smile, wave to him, and say bye. He grumbles his way out the door.
One day a pair of customers comes up to me and says, in heavily accented english "return!" as they lay down a pair of shirts and apparently want to return them. I recognize these shirts, I spent a lot of time labelling these shirts recently: they are cheap $15 shirts. They have price tags that read $95 (and a reciept for $95). Okay, that's really odd, so I take a closer look at the labels. You know those little plastic threads that hold the tag on? It had been cut, I pull on the label to read it more closely and it comes out neatly, like it had the back of it (that keeps it in place) cut out. It seemed very obvious to me that they had bought expensive shirts, cheap shirts, and now were trying to return the cheap shirts with the expensive tags to get most of their money back. I tell them I cannot accept them as returns, to which they reply: "No habla ingles. . .Return!". I then tell them, in Spanish I cannot return vandalized merchandise, they quickly sieze the shirts up and storm out of the store.
