I know you didn't read the receipt but do you ever check your messages? (long)

[SuperRTL]

Okay, so this one has been bugging me for a while.

When placing a special order through our store we tell you, very clearly, that it will take 2 to 3 weeks to get there and then you have 90 days to pick it up or you will lose your deposit and your fabric will be put out onto the floor to be sold.

I was promoted to my position in June. The month before, my store had failed an audit. I knew going into the position that we were under the gun. We were also going to have a shrink reaction visit in about a month which was going to include a "pseudo"audit and a visit from our new regional vice president. So, yay, starting a new position under a microscope.

Sitting in the (now officially MY) special order cabinet when I started in my position was an order that had been sitting there for 85 days. My first order of business is to call the woman who ordered the fabric and let her know she had 5 more days to pick up her fabric or she'd lose her deposit and her fabric. Now, this was not a small order. She'd paid over a thousand dollars for this fabric. I didn't want her to lose it.

She calls back after I leave for the day and I get a note on my desk that she would be in that Saturday to pick it up which she knew would be day 91. Could I please hold it?

Fine, I hold it. It's still there when I get in on Monday. I call her to say I hoped she was okay and if I didn't hear from her that day I'd be writing off the order and she'd lose her deposit. She calls me back and says she'll be in that day to pick it up, things had just been soooo crazy.

Fine, I'll hold it through the week.

It goes like this for 2 more weeks. All of which is well documented. I talk to my District Manager (aka the evil goblin) and she tells me to hold it a bit longer. Suddenly, I stop getting calls back from the woman who placed the order. I call her every week and leave messages. Well, the shrink reaction visit starts and right off the bat, we lose points for having that damn order still on the books. By now we've hit 120 days, well beyond the 90 day limit, and we get written up for not doing our jobs. The regional vice president tells me to get it off the books NOW. I call her to let her know she's lost her deposit and write it off with him watching. This was the end of July.

Fast forward to October. The woman comes in to pick up her order. I'm off that day. The store manager calmly explains to her that, after leaving it there for more than 90 days, she forfeited her deposit. She'd see what she could do but it was most likely gone. Now, October in a fabric store is crazy. I put in a call to the store support and ask them to call me back with what they can do. The woman calls me EVERYDAY to find out where her fabric is. She then asks if she can get her money back. The answer is NO. Not happening.

She calls my district manager. The evil goblin calls me and tells me to get her her money back or be prepared to be looking for work. I tell her the RVP told me to write it off, she was there for that meeting, and besides, it was written off 3 months ago. I can't resurrect stuff more than 6 weeks old. Fine, the evil goblin calls corporate. Nothing they can do. The woman has lost her deposit.

The evil goblin and the sucky customer have been thwarted but now, the evil goblin is gunning for me. *sigh* Not sure I can win this one.

[depechemodefan]

There are several people needing to be hit by the clue-by-four. The customer is treating you like a free storage facility. You can't have this stuff laying around, so I'm glad you documented and had the VP know about this.

Hope people higher up have spines and will stand by with the decision. I also hope the DM doesn't screw you over.

[Gerrinson]

The evil goblin and the sucky customer have been thwarted but now, the evil goblin is gunning for me. *sigh* Not sure I can win this one.

Perhaps, in the guise of 'excellent' customer service, you could notify the RVP of this situation and ask if the RVP could contact corporate about maybe getting this woman a portion of her deposit back since the goblin was unsuccessful. Stress that you're aware it is verboten and probably won't result in anything but that you're simply trying to go the extra mile.

If the RVP says 'No' - which I would expect if corporate is saying the same - then not only are you covered, but the RVP is aware and this incident shouldn't be able to come back to bite you later. At least not without you being able to push the goblin under a bus named RVP.

Of course, in the future, you should toe the line and make sure you can document all orders from above so as to avoid any 'he said/she said' situations which usually come back to haunt the lowest person on the totem pole.

[SuperRTL]

The DM hates my store. We're one of the highest performing stores in the state and we're super tiny. She constantly raids our hours to pay for projects at the larger stores then yells at us for not being fully staffed.

The RVP is not any better, actually. I'm doing very, very good at communicating with everybody via e-mail and keeping copies in a folder called CYA that we have in the office.

The DM wants to close the store and she hates us for keeping it not only open but profitable. So, "supplemental" orders from the RVP often have us trying to can the wind and the DM tells us to paint it purple or lose our jobs.

We will triumph! Just a bit frustrating at the moment.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

And this is why I hate holding merchandise with a white-hot passion. People will just leave their items sit in our backroom, knowing that they've paid for them and we're not going to just return them to stock and sell them out from underneath them.

As a result, I end up with a backroom full of random pieces of furniture sitting on carts or on the floor, often with no clue as to whether or not those items are paid for, if the people buying them have been called to pick up their shit already, should I return this to stock, blah blah blah bling bling bling blah.

We hold paid items for customers because they're usually idiots who can't show up with a big enough vehicle out of good customer service. Corporate would never let us not do it. We've contracted with a company called Zip to offer delivery and/or assembly of furniture items, but they've really priced themselves out of our market. Delivery alone is an extra hundred bucks. When I try to talk up the delivery service, the people just laugh. Then they buy their obscenely huge item and roll up in a Chevy Cobalt or similarly small vehicle. Then I get homicidal.

[SuperRTL]

heh, everything in my back room is labeled and dated, with Customer Names and Number. If it's a special order, they have 90 days to come and get it. If it's a 24 hour hold, they have 24 hours (I've started putting times on certain things, especially during the holidays) and then I put it back out on the floor. If they've already paid for it, they have to take it with them or it will be put back out on the floor withing 24 hours. Yeah, I'm a hardass but I also have a very tiny backroom. If it doesn't have to be there, it's out.

Of course, I have certain exceptions. We have one customer who I've paid for and driven samples over to their shop after we closed. Only I or the store manager are allowed to deal with her and the other employees all thank us for it. I regularly sped 2 hours with her and she usually drops about $500 per visit. I see her about once a week. If something comes in from a shipment that I know she's looking for, I'll hold it until she gets there. She's asked me to clone myself for other stores in the area, or at least hold "dealing with <customer> seminars" every few months. At one point, she had one of the other stores call me, on my cellphone, no less, to walk them through a return. She's the only customer I'd let do it and if she hadn't been standing at the counter for 2 hours already, she wouldn't have done it.

What most people don't realize, I.P., is that shopping is different from buying. It took me 6 months to pick out the entertainment center I wanted. When I went to buy it, I had my dad's truck and my brother and his friends with me to help. I don't ever lift anything I can bribe dumb young men to lift for me.

[FenigDurak]

I'm in your area and a costume designer. Chances are I've shopped your store. Is it the one with the name of that Aunt everyone has or the Will Smith superhero? Denver Fabrics is still my main haunt though although their selection of synthetics is awful. I ordered some Jet Set from Auntie's store once (I needed a long continuous yardage) and it was uneven in width in places and horribly wrinkled and creased. Pretty impressive for a polyester.

[LillFilly]

Another darned if you do, darned if you don't case. It sounds like you're working hard and are my kind of person to work with or shop with. Keep it up!

What do you want to bet that woman places another $1000 order?

P.S. You ever have the problem where someone orders a specific fabric, like a couple bolts, because they need every inch, and you get the bolts, and when you unwrap them to check one actually has 2-sections stitched together to make the whole; thus making it useless to the customer? Yeah.

[SuperRTL]

Yeah, some of the fabrics we get in are really horribly wrinkled or spliced together. It drives me nuts! Not much we can do about it, though, since it comes from the manufacturer that way. If a special order comes in like that, though, we can send it back and make them send another one. They usually get it right the second time. And yes, I work for the Auntie.

[depechemodefan]

The DM hates my store. We're one of the highest performing stores in the state and we're super tiny. She constantly raids our hours to pay for projects at the larger stores then yells at us for not being fully staffed.

The RVP is not any better, actually. [snip]

The DM wants to close the store and she hates us for keeping it not only open but profitable. So, "supplemental" orders from the RVP often have us trying to can the wind and the DM tells us to paint it purple or lose our jobs.

We will triumph! Just a bit frustrating at the moment.

I don't get that. You are making money but DM wants you closed?

[SuperRTL]

I don't get that. You are making money but DM wants you closed?

Yep. I think she gets bigger bonuses for visiting the larger stores and resents the time she has to spend on our store. We're one of the problem children. A higher level of theft because we're close to downtown, some of the bitchiest, most demanding customers around and a management team that routinely performs miracles. We pretty regularly make her look bad because most of the complaints to HR about her originate from our store. And she's not allowed to retaliate though she tries to do so without getting caught.

[Juggler]

This is why I convinced the boss to end paid holds. People would flake on it and then bitch when it went back to the shelf, even though we would let then use their deposit as credit towards another book.

We now have one 2-3 foot shelf behind the counter for holds. They are free. They go in the left end. When it is too full for a new hold we take some out from the right and reshelve them to make room. We don't guarantee any amount of time that they will be there.

The people who are serious and responsible come back quickly, the rest...fuck 'em.

[BookstoreEscapee]

My company holds items for 3 days if they are pulled from the floor, 2 weeks if they are special ordered. If it's not picked up it either goes back to the floor or back to the warehouse/publisher, depending on the item. If it is a pre-paid special order* they hold it for a couple months and if it isn't picked up it goes back to the warehouse and it gets refunded through .com's customer service.

If it's a slow time of year, you might get lucky and your item will be held longer, just because they might not bother to clean out the hold shelves when they don't need the room. But when that was part of my job, and we needed the room, I was pretty ruthless. (We also noted on all orders in the computer the date the customer was informed that their item was in, and the date we reshelved/returned it, so they couldn't say anything when they came in a week later and it was gone.)

* (which they only do if it is only available for ship-to-home; then they will have it shipped to the store and waive the shipping fee if the customer wants come back to pick it up; if they want it shipped to their home anyway, they pay shipping if it's under the limit like any other web order)