Threatening Customer

After the arrival of the new year, 2010, there was a guy who tried to return an electric razor he'd gotten for a gift, and an ink cartridge that he'd opened. Plus, he had paper without any red on it to prove the cartridge was defective. The employee called a manager over to explain about the ink cartridge, and gave store credit for the unopened electric razor.

When the manager arrived, the customer immediately went into his spiel, and so the manager didn't even hear at first that there was no receipt. When she looked at the package, she noted the ink cartridge expired December 2009. After the discovery by management regarding the absence of a receipt, she said it couldn't be done.

The other employee, now backed up by management, and having heard the date of the ink cartridge expiration, commented, "Without a receipt, we have no idea when you bought it."

This input obviously infuriated the man, who started turning red, and his face contorted as he spoke loudly and in a rather garbled, mouth-full-of-snuff fashion (one person called it yelling, but the other said he was about to yell),"Well, I'm just going to start storing all of my receipts at your house!" The first employee felt a little scared, but the manager was just worried the guy was going to blow up worse, so she very calmly apologized. The customers last words were that the ink cartridge might as well be thrown away.

That's the point I'd like to make here. An expired ink cartridge that is not working should be recycled, not taken to a store for a refund. Let's have some common sense here! Plus, why did he buy an ink cartridge that far ahead of time? I mean, the printer could break by the time he needed it, and it would need a different type of cartridge. He probably got a bargain on the ink cartridge somehwere, and not necessarily even where he threw a fit. He was seeing red, even if he wasn't printing it!

My Favorites

Today, the 26th of December, was not as bad as I'd anticipated. My favorite customer was the one who was charged too much for a combination pack of shampoo and conditioner. I quickly refunded her the difference, but then discovered she wanted all of her money back for the combo pack. I told someone else that I guess she realized she didn't want to wash her hair anymore!

Oddly enough, another one of my favorites was one of the meanest individuals. She had a total cow because I had refunded the money to her credit card before hearing that she'd rather have store credit. I guess I just didn't see how it was the end of the world, and I really didn't feel my actions were cause for somebody to yell at me. Later, I realized I could have just started over with the refund, but at the time I was just thinking how I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do. Sometimes I have trouble problem-solving when someone is yelling at me.

Speaking of that, it makes me remember the people who said something was labeled one price, and rang up about thirty dollars more. Well, instead of refunding them the difference, I called the department where the thing was from and found out it was the right price. I think if they hadn't been so grumpy and yelling at me, maybe I wouldn't have even called the department. When they heard that they were charged the right amount, they just wanted to return the $200 thing. Part of me was thinking, I should have just refunded the thirty dollar difference to them, but another part was thinking this is what people get when what they express is a bad attitude.