Poor Timing

As some of you know, I am currently job hunting. As this doesn't pay very well, I have taken a side job with a local retail store. I wasn't expecting to like it, but it has proven surprisingly entertaining. I thought I'd share.

First, a little context: I fill two basic roles, cashier and guest service. I was, briefly, stationed in the electronics department, but that was a temporary thing during the peak of the holiday insanity, and now I'm back to my regular postings. I deal solely with the exchange of goods for money (or some representation thereof). Sometimes I'm the one with the goods and sometimes I'm the one with the money.

I was expecting angry and frustrated customers, especially those bringing in returns, but while we get them, they are by far the exception. The majority of customers are friendly and pleasantly surprised by the speed and quality of service. I appreciate this. My boss appreciates this (one reason I survived the culling at the end of the holiday season). You probably don't, because pleasant, satisfied customers do not usually make for very entertaining stories. Sorry about that. So I'm going to share some of the other experiences. I just wanted you to understand that this is not typical.

So... on to the entertaining customers... Each is probably worth an entry of their own. For now, we'll start with deadlines:

My store has a 90 day return policy. This seems more than fair to me. Three months is a long time to decide whether you want to continue with your purchase. If it's enough time for me to decide whether to keep a girlfriend, it's more than enough time for you to figure out your toaster. Apparently, not everyone is as quick to decide as I am.

The first late return I encountered was a bathing suit return. This was November. Being my first, it took me a few minutes to realize why the system was balking. She'd purchased the suit in June, it was two months past its expiration date (clearly printed at the top of the receipt). She was mildly surprised and disappointed. I was astonished that she thought she could return it at all. Apparently, however, hers was a mild case.

A few customers even get outraged about it. The worst were a pair of girls who proclaimed this the "stupidest return policy ever" several different times. They wanted to know how we could stay in business with such a dumb restriction. One told the other loudly that she wished she'd purchased it from one of our major competitors since they didn't have such a ridiculous limit. Actually, that particular competitor has the exact same time limit, but by this point the girls had exhausted whatever compassion we initially felt, so no one behind the counter felt the need to correct them. They had passed from being customers and moved on to being entertainment as their assertions grew more and more ridiculous (the threat to never return was especially amusing when it finally came). They finally left when they realized that their projected outrage wasn't going to convince any of us to help them skirt around the restriction.

My all time favorite late return, however, is the one I refer to as the Christmas Tree Guy. He had an artificial Christmas tree that was missing some pieces. Unfortunately, he did not have his receipt but there are a number of ways to do a no-receipt return. I couldn't even get started; the system did not recognize the bar code on the side of the box when I scanned it. Odd, but not unheard of. Usually it means our store does not sell the item in question (mostly someone with a gift guessed wrong about where to take it back). In this case, however, the tree was a store brand tree with our logo all over the packaging. Clearly it came from us. Fortunately, when it's our brand, I can usually find the item number and hand enter it when the bar code is missing or damaged. I tried that, but the system still didn't recognize the tree. My boss brought over one of the stock keeping PDAs, still no record of the tree in the system. One of the more experienced team members finally put her finger on the problem: "Isn't that last year's tree model?"