The customer's always right.

The saying of 'the customer's always right'...is wrong. As a manager of a retail store and being an employee for two previous years, I've learned, the customer's NOT always right, in fact a lot of the time they're dead wrong. The other day there was a customer shopping around, mind she had a coupon. Once at the register to check out she asks the cashier “am I able to use this today”? The cashier looks at the coupon [EXPIRES 11.15.2010.] it was already mid December. The cashier replies, “no ma’am unfortunately the coupon expired last month.” Pause…”Is that your manager over there”? Pointing in my direction as I overheard this whole conversation. “Yes it is actually.” I pull my head up asking if there’s something I can help them with. She goes, “Am I able to use this”? It’s a coupon for 30% off our entire collection, automatically I think wow this customer spends a lot of money here. “No it actually expired last month; you should have gotten a coupon recently that doesn’t expire until after Christmas.” Pause. She pulls it from her other hand acting as if I caught her stealing or something? The cashier goes to throw it away and after the transaction is complete she goes, “Well let me have that back because the OTHER stores let me use it.” It’s funny how someone can make you feel so uncomfortable by you just following the rules. If I let you use that coupon, you’re cheating the system because all you’re doing is constantly getting a discount, which is fine, if you don’t wait until a month later to use it. If no coupons expired, what makes it any more wrong of me to take a coupon from last year? There’s a date on it for a reason and I don’t know what it’s like to be royalty and get my way everywhere I go because I’m an overworked, stressed out, middle aged parent who’s buying clothes for their kids, not even themselves.

 Another funny story. A woman comes in with a pair of jeans that had a rip down the crotch seam, they were her daughter’s jeans that she had bought for back to school, AKA August. We actually sold out of the jeans after they went down to $19.95, in fact all the stores in the district did. It is wrong that they ripped after a couple of months, but let me continue. I ask her if she has the receipt, no. I’m going to have to give you store credit for $19.95, because that was the price of the denim before we clearanced out of them. “Well that’s just not right, so you’re telling me you have NO other jeans like this.” Well I can show you some that are pretty much the same color, same style, same fit, just a different price. “How much is the price difference”? She demands. I go to the register, “You would owe us around $20.00 because the jeans you’d be purchasing are still full price.” “Um, can’t you look up how much I paid for them using my rewards card”? We are technically not allowed to do that, only because once again. There are boundaries for a reason, you lose your receipt, and you get store credit. Being interested in how much she ACTUALLY paid for them, I go along with the woman. I swipe her card and go to the month of August, I check the tag, scroll down, and what do I see…$5.95. I approach the woman with a sense of confidence. I let her know that she only paid 6 bucks for a pair of jeans and odds are she used a coupon at the time of buying them taking that $20 pair of jeans to $6. She was definatly in shock.

She tries to laugh like nothing ever happened; now I’m her best friend. I tell her that she probably should go with my original idea of crediting those jeans for store credit. She giggles and agrees. Once again showing that the customer is not always right, there are rules for a reason, and that there’s more to managing clothes than many believe.