The things we learn from our customers

[Slave to the Phone]

Not a sucky or icky story, more of a WTF!!! I recently had to start using a cane. (Its only temporary.) One of my customers, a young person working front line retail, noticed that it looked very new and asked me where I had gotten it. (I thought she was being perfectly polite, she wasn't asking about my health issues, but about something I was using.)

When I told her that I had bought it last night at the drug store, she told me that I shouldn't have done that. I could have saved all of that money if I had gone to a grocery store and told them that I had lost my cane there. They would have taken me to their collection of 20-30 canes and told me to find mine.

She also told me that she gets her cell phone chargers by going to a motel and telling them that her friend had stayed there last weekend and forgot her charger. They always have a box of chargers for her to look through.

I was able to keep a straight face while telling her something like "Really? I never would have thought about that.", but the guy in the cube next to us didn't have as much control.

[MoonCat]

The American consumer, everybody! Give 'em a hand!

Or a single finger. Your choice.

[Aria]

...A fascinating form of recycling. I can't even call it stealing because most of that stuff would have been unclaimed forever.

[Monterey Jack]

...A fascinating form of recycling. I can't even call it stealing because most of that stuff would have been unclaimed forever.

This isn't so much "sucky" as it is "common sense". CRML once started a thread about how his bar would accumulate tons of umbrellas, coats and other assorted rickrack in their lost & found, to the point where they'd either donate it to charity, or else throw it out, because so few people came back to claim it. I probably wouldn't have the balls to try it myself (if I needed a cane), but hey, finders keepers...

[Slave to the Phone]

At no point did I ever think that my customer was sucky, and I never once thought that she was stealing. I'm sure that any place that is open to the public has a whole lot of stuff in their lost and found bin.

I was just gobsmacked that she was so earnest about it, like she was amazed that anyone bought anything that could easily be obtained from a lost and found bin.

No harm, no foul and the planet thanks people like that for creative recycling.

[RealUnimportant]

Here in the City of Perpetual Damp, a favourite wrinkle is to pick somewhere that operates on-site lost property & report the loss of your black umbrella. I've got to where I enquire about handle details to ensure it's going to the rightful owner!

[Crossbow]

I don't think I would have done it for a cane, but I have done that for charging cables at a hotel. I forgot mine at home, so I went to the front desk and explained what happened. They pulled out a shipping box for a flat-screen monitor and said "have at it."