VENT TIME

Okay, so I like my retail job pretty well, but I'm going to take a moment to vent a bit about customers, co-workers and coupons.

Coupons are a nice thing that my company provides to customers. They save a lot of people a lot of money. That is all fine and good until you get the greedy people, customers who expect everything to be discounted and co-workers who will bend the rules to get more sales despite the trouble it causes.

Example: today I helped some women who were averagely nice until I didn't go along with this lady's request.

Customer "I bought this shirt before and used my $10.00 off coupon but I had to return the shirt because it was too small"

Me "okay"

Customer "Can I still use my coupon on this shirt?"

Me "Do you have a coupon to use?"

Customer "No I already gave it to you"

Umm, wait she did not give anything to me.

I go on to explain our return policy on coupons, if you exchange meaning return and rebuy the same item at the same time, you get the coupon benefit. We cannot use your coupon when you have already used it and we do not refund used coupons. Sounds simple enough, but then again I've had a few months of experiance with said coupons.

Customer "Well they do it for me all the time in another section, they just look it up on my card"

Poof like magic, yeah I understand.......

Me, getting a bit annoyed by this time,"I'm sorry ma'am, but we have no way to look up what coupons you have used, at this time there is nothing I can do about it"

Customer "Fine, Ill just go back there then"(mind you "the other section" is the one i previously worked in)

Me "Okay"

I'm not going to risk losing my job to save this woman ten bucks nor will I abide by her self appointed rules of the coupon.

So I call my manager to verify that I have not missed something here, (and to share the crazy woman story) she agrees that the woman is just trying to get an extra ten dollars off her total...big surprise.

So I go back to the department where the woman is headed, and see a co-worker who is known for bending the rules when it comes to coupons, I tell her about my conversation with the woman and manager and to expect something similar.

Later I go back to see what happened, my co-worker said she told the woman that it just wasn't possible to look up what coupons had been used...k...so a bit later anther employee tells me that what really happened was that the customer was told to drive home to another city and retrieve her receipt with the coupon on it and she would be issued the same discount.

Why does this bother me? Because the customer was encouraged to continue this behavior, because all of the time I put into the sell benefited someone else, and well, just because.

Another example:
Yesterday a woman's total was forty cents short of qualifying for her coupon, she gets huffy about it, but what can I do? It's not me saying no it's the register.

So as I'm walking out I notice her at another registar trying to use the same coupon, which still won't work (imagine that) well what does my co-worker do? Pulls out her own personal coupon from her purse and uses it for the customer. About two months ago we all got threatened with termination for doing this. I would just like to say to my co-worker-Way to go you have just encouraged this woman to keep abusing the coupon system and hassle the rest of us to provide the same courtesy to her.

Why does this bother me? It just does and I stayed five minutes late to ring this woman up.

I have had coupons thrown at me, been told I didn't know what I was talking about, and asked why we send out coupons if they don't work on anything anyway and been told "well it's cheaper at Wal-Mart anyway" (right, cause you know how much Calvin Klein they sell)

Why does this bother me? Despite the confrontational aspect of it, we don't have to give out coupons, we do it because we are awesome like that, but our customers have come to expect a discount on everything they touch and they don't care if we put our jobs at risk to give them a discount they don't qualify for. Co-workers who bend the rules take sells away from people who have spent time with the customer and therefore the rule abiding workers get questioned as to why they are not keeping up with so and so.

VENT OVER