Bookshelf

I am very excited!  Today I am putting together a new bookshelf that we bought.  A much and long needed one!  I will say, however, BOO TARGET!  We'd been planning to get this bookshelf for a while and yesterday I saw that it was on sale on the website.  I swear I saw something that said this sale was also going on in stores.  Not so.  I got to the store and it was not on sale.  Boo Target! 

Now, since we were going to buy it at full price anyway, this isn't much of a loss but it annoys me.  If you're having a sale on your website, you need to have it in store if the item is available in stores.  That's just rude!  Also, you don't price match your own website?  I'm so confused at this point.  Why not?  It is the same company with the same item.  Businesses today do things so very bass-ackwards that they screw over customers and make people angry. 

Hasn't a business ever thought "Hey, maybe if I don't do things that will make customers angry (things that don't make sense anyway) like suddenly change prices (Netflix) or not match our own website, we might make more money?"  or  "Hey, if I went for quality, perhaps I could make quantity and build good, long-term relationships with customers?"  It is all about profit now.  God, forbid a business try to do something that will make them long-term profit and allow them to expand themselves.

Then there is the other hand.  The "lets-bend-over-and-let-the-customer-put-their-boot-so-far-up-our-tush-it-becomes-our-brain" hand.  Listen, businesses, there is a time and a place for pleasing customers.  Whoever said "the customer is always right" needs to be shot, or if said person is dead already, resurrected as a zombie and bludgeoned to death once more. 

Having worked in retail, I have seen my share of customers with legitimate problems that have either been our fault, or out of our control.  I have also seen more than my share of "free-food" customers.  These second kind are the really annoying ones.  One of the stores I work for sells basic t-shirts in multiple colours and continues to make them every year. 

This particular day, a lady brought some of these t-shirts in and wanted to exchange them, saying she had just bought them.  Well, this was untrue.  First sign this was a false statement: she had no receipt.  Well, that usually isn't too much of a problem as people lose receipts all the time.  The second sign she was lying was that upon examining the shirts she'd supposedly bought the day before, I noted the multiple wear-and-tear holes in the front of the shirt.  They types of holes that only come from ages of wearing and years of tearing.  I pointed them out and she says they came that way.  The final sign she was lying: I checked the tags on the inside of the shirt.  You see, on the inside of your shirt, there are little tags that list the style number and other information.  Within that information is when this particular item was sold made.  These were made for the fall season of 2005.  (This was at least in 2007 or later.)  I pointed this out to her as well but she was persistent and rude.  I told her that I could not exchange something without a receipt that was in this poor condition.

At this point, my manger came over to help.  Thank God for people like him.  He gave them the same look-over I had and came to the same conclusion.  Persistent bitch.  Then my pansy manager comes over.  Okay, that was harsh.  I apologize.  However, though this guy is nice, he is a pushover and will do exactly the sort of boot-brain things I mentioned above.  My other manager and I walked away and washed our hands of it but not before stating to him that we were not going to return something in that condition without a receipt.  My other manager gave her what she wanted.  It made the rest of us very angry.

You see, here is what people do.  This is not exclusive to any one store.  People buy something, get their use out of it and then exchange it for the newer model years later or they buy the new model and return the old in the box the new one came in.  Most good employees will be able to catch this.  I know a guy who worked as a manager at a store and caught this sort of thing all of the time.  I applaud him for not tolerating it.  It is one thing to get what you are due by a company.  It is completely another to screw the company over.

So how do we win?  How do we find balance in this giant mess of muck?  We get back to work as my Totino's Pizza rolls are all consumed and the bookshelf isn't finishing itself.  :)