I dusted this one off from the annals of my memory, dating back to maybe mid-July.
I work for a well-known nationwide drug store, whose name rhymes with "PBS", as an intern. I've worked there for 9 months now, and while I have learned almost everything I need to, I still have a ways to go, as I only work somewhere on the order of 8 hours per week.
It's sometime in the evening, around 7PM, two more hours left until closing. We weren't completely dead in the pharmacy (or in the main store), but we did have some customers. This pleasant couple of foreign descent (and as such, I cannot understand them all too well) comes into the pharmacy and drops off a prescription for their two-year-old. No problem, happy to help! They said they had some shopping to do and they'll be back for it.
We fill it and go about our business and they come back to the pharmacy to pick up their son's prescription and check out. I notice, as they're making their way back to the pharmacy, that they have a buggy loaded, as in stacked high to the top, with merchandise from the store.
I've been previously told by colleagues in the pharmacy that if people have more than, say, ten items or thereabouts, we should really ask them to check out up front, as it will bog us down from our pharmacy work. Seeing as it wasn't busy at all, I decided to be nice to them and ring them up with their script, so they wouldn't have to wait up front.
I'm merrily ringing out, and as I'm doing so, I notice that the wife has 6, 7, maybe even 8 of the same product, which I thought was rather odd. She then pulls out a small blue purse, which is overflowing with coupons.
My heart sank when I saw this.
The next 20 minutes consisted of her trying to use every single coupon on every single product she has. She tried to use 8 copies of the same coupon for 8 bottles of Pantene Pro-V shampoo, and the coupon (most of them were manufacturer's coupons) explicity stated that it may not be combined with other coupons, so of course the register didn't accept it. Let's not forget the handful of expired coupons, which is a separate issue altogether (apparently, "expired" was not in either of their vocabulary).
By this point, the pharmacist is telling me to call a store manager to sort things out, as neither she (the pharmacist) nor I knew enough to deal with this kind of thing.
(Keep in mind that this couple has not been overly sucky yet in terms of their attitudes. I chaulk that up to the fact that neither of their English skills were very good, and they more often than not said nothing instead of tried to argue with me. They would just look at me as if I'm crazy when I said they can't use more than one coupon because the register wouldn't let me.)
So then my store manager comes back and asks what the problem is. I bring her up to speed on the problem and what the couple wants to do, and she deals with them for a good 20 minutes or so.
Long story short, my store manager accepts all the coupons (except the ones that had expired, say, LAST YEAR), and the family walks out with a $50 purchase... they they paid $3 for. $3! They had a $20 store credit card and enough coupons to wallpaper a house, but then that STILL wasn't good enough for them! They had apparently worked out the math before hand, and they had reasoned that the amount of coupons they had clipped would allow them to buy what they bought without paying for it. That was when they really raised a fuss, in semi-broken English, with the store manager, who flat-out told them no, and to appreciate what they got for $3, and leave. They left quietly after that.
The audacity of people! You were told NO. You got $50 worth of merchandise for $3! (I think it was actually $2.xx they paid, if I remember correctly). Leave, and quit penny-pinching, for God's sake! My SM really was too good to these people, though. She even was complaining afterwards that they cleaned the store out of Ritz crackers, peanut butter, Pantene Pro-V, and several other items.
Bottom line:
1. Penny-pinchers annoy the hell out of me.
2. I think what this couple was doing was tantamount to scamming the store, but kept my mouth shut.
3. I really need to listen to colleagues when they give me advice.
4. The line between treating customers well and caving in to scammers, for my SM, is apparently razor-thin.
I've never worked as a cashier for the front store, so I really have no experience with this kind of thing. We have plenty of our own sucky customers in the pharmacy, but almost exclusively relating to the pharmacy somehow. This one gave me a slight headache. Filling scripts is one thing, dealing with ignorant people who refuse to read or understand anything is completely different.
Your thoughts?
I work for a well-known nationwide drug store, whose name rhymes with "PBS", as an intern. I've worked there for 9 months now, and while I have learned almost everything I need to, I still have a ways to go, as I only work somewhere on the order of 8 hours per week.
It's sometime in the evening, around 7PM, two more hours left until closing. We weren't completely dead in the pharmacy (or in the main store), but we did have some customers. This pleasant couple of foreign descent (and as such, I cannot understand them all too well) comes into the pharmacy and drops off a prescription for their two-year-old. No problem, happy to help! They said they had some shopping to do and they'll be back for it.
We fill it and go about our business and they come back to the pharmacy to pick up their son's prescription and check out. I notice, as they're making their way back to the pharmacy, that they have a buggy loaded, as in stacked high to the top, with merchandise from the store.
I've been previously told by colleagues in the pharmacy that if people have more than, say, ten items or thereabouts, we should really ask them to check out up front, as it will bog us down from our pharmacy work. Seeing as it wasn't busy at all, I decided to be nice to them and ring them up with their script, so they wouldn't have to wait up front.
I'm merrily ringing out, and as I'm doing so, I notice that the wife has 6, 7, maybe even 8 of the same product, which I thought was rather odd. She then pulls out a small blue purse, which is overflowing with coupons.
My heart sank when I saw this.
The next 20 minutes consisted of her trying to use every single coupon on every single product she has. She tried to use 8 copies of the same coupon for 8 bottles of Pantene Pro-V shampoo, and the coupon (most of them were manufacturer's coupons) explicity stated that it may not be combined with other coupons, so of course the register didn't accept it. Let's not forget the handful of expired coupons, which is a separate issue altogether (apparently, "expired" was not in either of their vocabulary).
By this point, the pharmacist is telling me to call a store manager to sort things out, as neither she (the pharmacist) nor I knew enough to deal with this kind of thing.
(Keep in mind that this couple has not been overly sucky yet in terms of their attitudes. I chaulk that up to the fact that neither of their English skills were very good, and they more often than not said nothing instead of tried to argue with me. They would just look at me as if I'm crazy when I said they can't use more than one coupon because the register wouldn't let me.)
So then my store manager comes back and asks what the problem is. I bring her up to speed on the problem and what the couple wants to do, and she deals with them for a good 20 minutes or so.
Long story short, my store manager accepts all the coupons (except the ones that had expired, say, LAST YEAR), and the family walks out with a $50 purchase... they they paid $3 for. $3! They had a $20 store credit card and enough coupons to wallpaper a house, but then that STILL wasn't good enough for them! They had apparently worked out the math before hand, and they had reasoned that the amount of coupons they had clipped would allow them to buy what they bought without paying for it. That was when they really raised a fuss, in semi-broken English, with the store manager, who flat-out told them no, and to appreciate what they got for $3, and leave. They left quietly after that.
The audacity of people! You were told NO. You got $50 worth of merchandise for $3! (I think it was actually $2.xx they paid, if I remember correctly). Leave, and quit penny-pinching, for God's sake! My SM really was too good to these people, though. She even was complaining afterwards that they cleaned the store out of Ritz crackers, peanut butter, Pantene Pro-V, and several other items.
Bottom line:
1. Penny-pinchers annoy the hell out of me.
2. I think what this couple was doing was tantamount to scamming the store, but kept my mouth shut.
3. I really need to listen to colleagues when they give me advice.
4. The line between treating customers well and caving in to scammers, for my SM, is apparently razor-thin.
I've never worked as a cashier for the front store, so I really have no experience with this kind of thing. We have plenty of our own sucky customers in the pharmacy, but almost exclusively relating to the pharmacy somehow. This one gave me a slight headache. Filling scripts is one thing, dealing with ignorant people who refuse to read or understand anything is completely different.
Your thoughts?
Comment