Annoying Waste of My Time

[wagegoth]

While working in Nordstrom's lingerie department, I waited on a young woman one day. She was very attractive and was trying on a few different, expensive sets of gown and robe (negligee and peignoir, if you prefer).

She'd come out of the dressing room to ask me about each set, how did it look (frankly, she would have looked good in a garbage bag (I hate her still)), was it washable, the whole nine yards, dragging this out to almost an hour.

Finally, she buys a $500 set with her AmEx. Yippee, a good chunk of my daily sales right there!

But, of course, that was not the end.

The next day, I get a call from another Nordstrom, in another area code, regarding this sale. The salesperson asks me if I sold this set, which she described, to this aforementioned young woman.

Heart sinking, I replied that I had.

Sure enough, the woman was returning the set, and returning it for cash, which Nordstrom allowed at the time.

What a b***h! She totally wasted my time so that she could score some extra cash off her AmEx account. She could have walked in, grabbed the items off the rack and paid for them in five minutes, but, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, she had to play serious customer, waste my time, and keep me from making other sales.

The only thing that made me feel better was the evil thought that she was using the money to buy coke, and would soon lose her looks when her nose collapsed and be unable to score a new sugar daddy to pay for her expensive habits.

The worry over the bad karma I might earn kept me from wishing that; I try to keep those thoughts to just brief flights of fancy.

[TwoScoopsSciath]

Yep. I had customers pull this with me. Only we serve food and we don't give cash refunds on card payment.

[Jack7957]

...She was very attractive and was trying on a few different, expensive sets of gown and robe (negligee and peignoir, if you prefer)....Finally, she buys a $500 set with her AmEx. Yippee, a good chunk of my daily sales right there!...The salesperson asks me if I sold this set, which she described, to this aforementioned young woman. ...Sure enough, the woman was returning the set, and returning it for cash, which Nordstrom allowed at the time.

Maybe she used it and was done with it?

[blas]

Maybe she had a genuine reason to return it.

Oh, say, I don't know.....she wanted something to really wow her boyfriend. She found the perfect thing because of your help.

But go figure, maybe the asshole stood her up or found a new girlfriend and she walked in on them.

I bought a very expensive negligee once for a guy, and he stood me up. You can sure as hell bet I returned it the next day. And I didn't give two shits what anyone thought about it. I was never spending that kind of money again on impressing a guy that wasn't even going to show up. I could care less what the associates at VS thought of me when I asked that the money be credited back to my debit card.

Always consider every option and every scenario imaginable. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with you. You still got paid.

[JustADude]

Maybe she used it and was done with it?

Yeah, there's always the 'use the expensive thing once and return it' crowd. Still sucky, but the long, drawn-out process of sorting becomes an inherent part of the Suck, not a compounding infraction.


Why yes, I am trying to create a comprehensive, formalized rating system for Suck because I have nothing better to do. How'd you guess?

[zzapp the witch]

I knew a girl I was in college with used to do that. (She probably still does).

[blas]

Girls used to do that in middle school and high school as well, always with really expensive brand name clothes and keep the tags on. I stopped wondering after a while why so many girls "forgot" to take their tags off.

It's easy to judge like that, but my only point earlier was that you have to consider every scenario, and I don't see why someone would waste so much time if they weren't going to keep it. I doubt the girls I went to school with hassled sales associates for their opinions and whatnot for a long time and then returned the clothes the next day. I'm sure they just went shopping like normal, picked stuff out, and then came back the next day.

[AFpheonix]

....she didn't need it anymore, and she returned it to a DIFFERENT location and got cash back instead of a charge back to her card? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggghhht.....

[justZu]

Finally, she buys a $500 set with her AmEx.

$500 for one set of PJ's. I think I spend less than $500 a year on clothes. I feel poor...

[DesignFox]

Most of us work retail...aren't we, by definition, "poor?" j/k

Seriously, though, if the girl returned the product, WageGoth could have lost the commission. At least, that's how it works in cell phone sales. If someone cancels their service/feature/returns a product within the first 6 months I lose the entire commission for the sale. Very freaking frustrating if I spent a good hour or more working with the customer.

[Mike Taylor]

Sounds like the MO of a scam artist to me.

[wagegoth]

If she had had the credit put back on her AmEx I would have thought, "Okay, cold feet, expensive item, it happens." The fact that she wanted cash back made me think that she never really wanted the set, she was doing it for the money.

I have had customers that would try on several things, then only buy one, or none. Many times, they didn't actually want the items, they wanted attention and reassurance they aren't getting elsewhere. Having a sales assistant tell them how great they look, they have excellent taste, yada yada yada, is a kind of fix for them. So she may have needed a little fix along with the cash.