Greedy Customers

 

This weekend I encountered two greedy customers who really irked me, but there was nothing I could do about it. Since it has annoyed me since then, I decided to share the stories with you guys. Sorry to rant, but I think it will make me feel better to hear your feedback!

 

The first greedy customer was at the grocery store. I have to give you some back story before I can actually tell you the story, so I hope I don’t bore you to death in the process!

Recently, the grocery store I work for decided to implement a hassle free return policy. In my opinion, returns have always been hassle free, but now the company has taken it to a new level. This means that we must accept all returns, regardless of if the customer has a receipt or not.

In the past, if the customer was returning a pricey item, we could look in the sales logs to see if that item had been sold recently. Sometimes customers steal items off the shelf and return them for the cash. If the item hadn’t been sold in months, then we could refuse the return if the customer claimed to have bought it recently. We are no longer allowed to use that as a criteria to refuse a return.

Another new rule is that the money does not have to go on a store gift card if the customer does not have a receipt. In the past, if the return was over $15 and the customer did not have a receipt, then it had to go on a store gift card. This policy is no longer in effect.

So now to the story. It was 7:58 on Friday night and customer service closes at 8:00. A customer walked up with a bag and said he had items to return. As he opened the bag, I saw a $25 bottle of hair serum, at $30 package of mens razor cartridges, and a $15 calculator. I asked the customer if he had a receipt and he said no. He said that he had bought the items earlier that day only to get home and find out his wife had bought them as well. I then asked if he would mind if I put the money on a gift card and he said yes he would mind, and that he wanted the cash for it. I had to happily oblige because of the new rule and give the man $70 cash.

Out of curiosity, I then went into our sales history and found that none of those items had been sold in recent months. The hair serum hadn’t been sold in 3 months, the razors in 1 month and the calculator had never been sold as far back as I could see. The man clearly stole the items in order to get cash.

I know that this shouldn’t bother me, but it does. I feel wrong giving cash to a person who did not pay for the item. I know that it is policy and I must follow it, but at the same time, it goes against my own personal morals. The way I see it, I just aided that man in stealing money from the company I work for. How do you guys feel about this? Do you think I am normal for feeling so guilty about this? Or should I simply shrug it off because I am following procedure as I was told?

The second story happened at the bank. This weekend was customer appreciation weekend… Yipeee. I hope you can sense the sarcasm. Each customer was given a free candy bar, and inside select candy bars were golden tickets. If you were lucky enough to get a golden ticket, then you won the specified prize. The bank gave away a total of 5 iPads, 5 $200 gas cards, and 20 $50 grocery store gift cards.

Now you may be wondering why I wasn’t excited about this. First of all, bank employees and family member of employees could not participate. Lame. My family members are all customers of the bank and should be appreciated just like any other customer. Instead they did their banking like they normally do on a Saturday and didn’t get a candy bar like every other customer in line.

My little brother was most upset about this. He is 11 and every week he deposits the money he has earned from chores into his very own savings account. He hasn’t withdrawn any money since he opened the account about a year ago, and is very proud to go there every week and make a deposit. He loves getting his balance and seeing it increase every week. When he saw other customers getting candy bars, he couldn’t wait for it to be his turn. But, the teller knew he was my brother and had to deny him a candy bar. He didn’t even want it for the possibility of winning a prize, he just wanted the chocolate! Sigh.

The bank didn’t advertise customer appreciation weekend, but word got out quick. The candy bars were gone by 1 on saturday. So much for customer appreciation weekend, more like customer appreciation Saturday morning.

So this one customer comes to the drive up and after I waited on her, she pressed the call button. I asked her what I could help her with and this is what followed:

• Customer: (rudely) Are you not giving out candy bars at the drive up? Because I don’t see one in here.
• Me: No I am sorry miss, the candy bars do not fit in the drive up tube, and unfortunately we are all out anyway.
• Customer: What do you mean you’re all out?

• Me: Well the company didn’t anticipate us going through them so quickly, so unfortunately we have no more.
• Customer: Well that is ridiculous! I only came back to do more banking so that I could get another candy bar!

Ummmm… how does one even respond to such a remark? First of all, it was only supposed to be one per customer. And second of all, we ran out because of greedy people like you! Well I wish I could have said that anyways. Instead I apologized and told her that we appreciated her business.

What do you guys think? Am I overreacting about these greedy customers? Let me know, I love hearing your feedback, and it usually helps me to feel better!

Have a wonderful week fellow workaholics.