Not sure how to respond to this woman

[FenigDurak]

Everyday a Hospital Admin employee comes into my store, bee lines for our high end lotion display, gives herself a generous helping from our lotion sampler bottle, then leaves. She never buys anything, she bitches about the price of the lotion if approached, and rarely even responds to me "Hi there!"

I'm getting realy irritated with this woman and I'm debating asking my boss what she would like done, if anything at all. What do y'all think?

[BookstoreEscapee]

I say the tester should "unfortunately" be empty tomorrow...and there's only one bottle left, so we can't open that, oh, no...

That is annoying. I'd consider that theft, personally. The point of the tester is so you can decide if you want to buy it, not so you don't have to buy it..grr.

[Foxglove8778]

Hmmmmm.... I'd be so tempted to put something else in the bottle.... Shampoo for example.... Pet shampoo.... for fleas......

[draggar]

I say the tester should "unfortunately" be empty tomorrow...and there's only one bottle left, so we can't open that

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And if she opens up the one left, she has to buy it. If she doesn't, that's stealing.

Hmmmmm.... I'd be so tempted to put something else in the bottle.... Shampoo for example.... Pet shampoo.... for fleas......

Come on, you can do better than that.

Tabasco, or OHHH!! Preperation H! I hear that stuff really REALLY smells!

TOOTHPASTE!!!!

Fill it up with the cheap stuff.

[Foxglove8778]

*giggle* have you ever SMELLED really cheap flea shampoo?

[Jester]

First, check with your boss on this. The last thing you want to do is something that could get you in trouble.

But, if your boss is reasonable and gives a hoo ha about the business, I would say a reasonable approach would be thus:

"Ma'am? This display is for people to sample the lotion who may be interested in buying it in various quantities. It is NOT to be considered an unlimited sample, NOR is it here to be your personal daily lotion ration, and we are not amused by your using it daily without making any purchases whatsoever from our business. Since you have taken several samples of this lotion and obviously know what it is like, we are going to have to ask you to stop using the sampler and either buy a bottle of this lotion or stop frequenting our establishment. We feel we must make it clear that we are NOT here to dispense a free allotment of this lotion to you on a daily basis. If you do not stop this behavior, we will be forded to ban you from this business or contact the authorities regarding what we consider theft of our product. The choice is yours, ma'am."

Considering my sarcastic and often caustic nature, I would say the above is a model of diplomacy and tact.

[FenigDurak]

Jester, you've been my hero for months now. Congratulations on continuing to earn said title.

I called one of my bosses at the end of the night and mentioned this. He said that the same thing happens continually at the other store. So I'm thinking I'm going to hide the sample bottle, let my morning coworker know what I'm doing, and see what develops. This woman obviously likes the lotion, otherwise she wouldn't be back everyday to use it, but c'mon! We're not there to give away freebies.

I suppose when she comes in I can tell her that the sample bottle has disappeared and we need to wait for another shipment before we can make another. I dunno, it just feels so underhanded.

[Fandangoose]

Come on, you can do better than that.

<SNIP>

Fill it up with the cheap stuff.

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Superglue!!! Or whatever that stuff was in "American Pie 2!"

[Horsetuna]

Put some concentrated food coloring dye in it. It wont come out of her hands easily.

[Ree]

Just a reminder for those suggesting replacing the bottle with potentially harmful substances...I realize you're probably joking, but we don't condone things like that.

Besides, why would they ruin a perfectly good bottle of obviously expensive lotion just to deter one person who is too cheap to buy it?

I think the sample bottle needs to disappear, and a manager should explain about the purpose of the sampler.

[GayleShy]

Dang, it's people like her that make stores need those hand lotion girls. The ones who give you a squirt of lotion and a half hour talk about why this lotion will change your life. You'd better not sample that lotion unless you're damn well thinking of buying some.

As for your problem, if your manager is the ballsey type who will stand up to an SC (stop rolling your eyes, there really are some left in the world) then ask her to tell the woman to go away. If she's not, well, every manager responds to money and its loss. The lotion is not cheap and stores leave those things out in good faith, thinking that the customers will buy them. If she's stealing the lotion then other real customers don't have a chance to see what it's like.

Also, I know a lot of stores have a policy that says you can't use their restroom without a purchase, maybe you could tell her you've adopted that policy on samples due to the high amout of sampling without intent to buy.

[Arachne]

Seems to me that you don't have to tell her anything. Hide the bottle. I'm betting that she knows that what she's doing isn't really the classiest thing she could do, and so she'll be too embarrassed to push it. If not, then you have the following conversation:

Her: The sample bottle of lotion is gone!

You: ::looking:: Why so it is!

Her: Where is it?

You: ::Giving her an apologetic smile:: We had problems with people using too much of that particular sample without buying any, so we decided to take the sample down to see if we could make any sales. I'm sure it'll be back in a week or so. ::Bright smile::. The good news is that we have lots for sale!

Her: But it's SOOOO expensive!

You: Yeah, it's pretty pricey, isn't it? That's why we had so much trouble with people taking so much of it without buying it! It just costs so much to replace the bottles, and they get used up so fast! Do you know some people come in every day? Can you believe that? I guess it must be really good lotion.

(I use the whole 'some people, but not you, have been abusing our kindness, doesn't it suck? Don't people like that suck?' thing on my SCs all the time. It forces them to choose between either admitting that they suck or keeping their fool mouths shut, all the while casting me as their bestest friend who gossips with them. It doesn't work on the worst of them, but calms everyone else down.)

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

(I use the whole 'some people, but not you, have been abusing our kindness, doesn't it suck? Don't people like that suck?' thing on my SCs all the time. It forces them to choose between either admitting that they suck or keeping their fool mouths shut, all the while casting me as their bestest friend who gossips with them. It doesn't work on the worst of them, but calms everyone else down.)

That is just awesome. You have the gift of telling people that they are jerkwads in such a way that they can't complain that you're calling them jerkwads.

Kudos to you.

Anyway I agree that while amusing to contemplate (and I can think of several things *I* could put into the bottle) it's not a good idea, and could backfire on you when other people who honestly want to test before buying.

The best thing is to make the sample bottle disappear for a while until the moocher finds the scratch to buy some of the crap herself or finds some other store to mooch from.

M

[BusyBee]

You: ::Giving her an apologetic smile:: We had problems with people using too much of that particular sample without buying any...

Aww ya beat me to it! hehehe

Anyway, I was going to suggest, hide the sample and basically give her the sort of response Arachne showed if she comes in looking/asking for it.
"Oh, I'm sorry, but we had too many people taking advantage of the free tester without actually buying any. We're trialing without the tester and evaluating the effectiveness of it's availability at this point. *Big friendly smile* You're welcome to buy a bottle for yourself though! They're just over here for $xx.xx!"
Something like that would let her know that there is a problem with people taking too much, and if she keeps it up after you have uh *cough* "evaluated" it and put it out again then you know she's definitely intending to rip you off and can maybe bring that to your manager.

[draggar]

(I use the whole 'some people, but not you, have been abusing our kindness, doesn't it suck? Don't people like that suck?' thing on my SCs all the time. It forces them to choose between either admitting that they suck or keeping their fool mouths shut, all the while casting me as their bestest friend who gossips with them. It doesn't work on the worst of them, but calms everyone else down.)

The sad thing is that she's probabaly so pretentious that she would just open up another bottle expecting the store to supply her with an unlimited supply of free lotion.

But, if she does that, then you can nab her for theft.