This tale has at its heart a sucky customer, but also has some Morons in Management in it.
As I've mentioned, my store got a facelift a couple months back. They rearranged everything and gave us a great new tech counter with a lot more space for working on PCs.
Now, right on the tails of THAT remodel, they've decided to remodel us AGAIN. From the sounds of it, they're giving us a smaller version of the remodel that my old store got. Really stupid, especially since they'll be undoing a lot of the changes they just did.
Anyway, one thing they're changing is our furniture department. And by change, I mean they are eliminating most of it. We're only keeping chairs, file cabinets, some bookcases, and some of the smaller desks, but everything else must go. We've already sent back most of the boxed stuff, but the displays can't be returned, so Captain Jellico went through a few days ago and marked down all the displays 30-40% off.
Apparently we were then given orders from the district manager to mark them down again - 50% off the already dropped prices - and stand firm, no haggling. However, seeing as they're now priced at 1/3 or less their original price, that shouldn't be a problem right, since it's such a good deal?
Ha ha....no.
Had a guy who was interested in buying a display bookcase, a display desk, and a chair (which would be regular price). The bookcase was $50, marked down from $150, and the desk was $70, marked down from $180.
He wanted MORE MONEY taken off, because the bookcase didn't have the assembly instructions with it. MOST of our displays do not have the instructions, because when they are sold, they're sold as-is. Most people take them fully assembled and load them into a pickup truck. But this guy would need to take it apart, and he was unhappy that 1) we wouldn't disassemble it for him 2) we wouldn't provide tools for him to disassemble it himself, 3) no instructions, and 4) he's buying THREE pieces of furniture, so we should give him a discount on that basis alone.
Honestly, 1 and 2 are in place for liability reasons, and we're under strict orders about that. While I can't say it to the customer, how he gets the thing out of the store and to his house is his problem, not ours. As for 3.....it's a freaking BOOKCASE. Those are the most straightforward things to assemble. I explained to him that he should only take it apart as much as needed to make it fit in his vehicle, then reassemble it the same way he insisted he'd need the instructions for that......
....unless we took more money off. I find that very odd, since regardless of price, he'd still have the same assembly issues.
As for 4.....that's just a pile of crap, because 2 of the 3 things he wanted to buy were already marked down well below cost, and the chair was THE cheapest chair we sell, and it was on sale to boot, so we were not making much on it. Certainly nowhere near enough to recoup the loss from the other two items.
Now, at this point I was still under the impression that we could haggle a bit on price (I'd not yet been made aware of the new orders from the DM), so I went and spoke with The Don about it.
The Don came over and flatly told the guy no, we can't reduce the price any further, because they're already steeply discounted, and that if he didn't buy it, someone would buy it tomorrow. Then he left.
A few minutes later, the customer came back over to me and started arguing with me about the price, claiming he "only" wanted $10 taken off one of the items because *repeats above EW reasoning.*
I tried to explain to him that my GENERAL MANAGER had already said no, so there was nothing I could do, but he insisted, and kept arguing with me about it.
Finally it got to the point where I had to tell him "Sir, you're asking me to overrule my BOSS. I just can't do that."
After I said that, he demanded to speak to The Don again. Glad to hand off this EW, I headed for the nearest phone to page him.
SC: No...he went that way!!!
Me: What?
SC: Your boss....he went that way *points* not where you're going.
Me: Sir, I'm going to call him on the phone.
The guy then proceeds to engage The Don in yet another protracted argument, rinsing and repeating the same "points" over and over again, until - MUCH to my annoyance - The Don agreed to give him another $10 off the desk just to shut him up.
As I've mentioned, my store got a facelift a couple months back. They rearranged everything and gave us a great new tech counter with a lot more space for working on PCs.
Now, right on the tails of THAT remodel, they've decided to remodel us AGAIN. From the sounds of it, they're giving us a smaller version of the remodel that my old store got. Really stupid, especially since they'll be undoing a lot of the changes they just did.
Anyway, one thing they're changing is our furniture department. And by change, I mean they are eliminating most of it. We're only keeping chairs, file cabinets, some bookcases, and some of the smaller desks, but everything else must go. We've already sent back most of the boxed stuff, but the displays can't be returned, so Captain Jellico went through a few days ago and marked down all the displays 30-40% off.
Apparently we were then given orders from the district manager to mark them down again - 50% off the already dropped prices - and stand firm, no haggling. However, seeing as they're now priced at 1/3 or less their original price, that shouldn't be a problem right, since it's such a good deal?
Ha ha....no.
Had a guy who was interested in buying a display bookcase, a display desk, and a chair (which would be regular price). The bookcase was $50, marked down from $150, and the desk was $70, marked down from $180.
He wanted MORE MONEY taken off, because the bookcase didn't have the assembly instructions with it. MOST of our displays do not have the instructions, because when they are sold, they're sold as-is. Most people take them fully assembled and load them into a pickup truck. But this guy would need to take it apart, and he was unhappy that 1) we wouldn't disassemble it for him 2) we wouldn't provide tools for him to disassemble it himself, 3) no instructions, and 4) he's buying THREE pieces of furniture, so we should give him a discount on that basis alone.
Honestly, 1 and 2 are in place for liability reasons, and we're under strict orders about that. While I can't say it to the customer, how he gets the thing out of the store and to his house is his problem, not ours. As for 3.....it's a freaking BOOKCASE. Those are the most straightforward things to assemble. I explained to him that he should only take it apart as much as needed to make it fit in his vehicle, then reassemble it the same way he insisted he'd need the instructions for that......
....unless we took more money off. I find that very odd, since regardless of price, he'd still have the same assembly issues.

As for 4.....that's just a pile of crap, because 2 of the 3 things he wanted to buy were already marked down well below cost, and the chair was THE cheapest chair we sell, and it was on sale to boot, so we were not making much on it. Certainly nowhere near enough to recoup the loss from the other two items.
Now, at this point I was still under the impression that we could haggle a bit on price (I'd not yet been made aware of the new orders from the DM), so I went and spoke with The Don about it.
The Don came over and flatly told the guy no, we can't reduce the price any further, because they're already steeply discounted, and that if he didn't buy it, someone would buy it tomorrow. Then he left.
A few minutes later, the customer came back over to me and started arguing with me about the price, claiming he "only" wanted $10 taken off one of the items because *repeats above EW reasoning.*
I tried to explain to him that my GENERAL MANAGER had already said no, so there was nothing I could do, but he insisted, and kept arguing with me about it.
Finally it got to the point where I had to tell him "Sir, you're asking me to overrule my BOSS. I just can't do that."
After I said that, he demanded to speak to The Don again. Glad to hand off this EW, I headed for the nearest phone to page him.
SC: No...he went that way!!!
Me: What?
SC: Your boss....he went that way *points* not where you're going.
Me: Sir, I'm going to call him on the phone.
The guy then proceeds to engage The Don in yet another protracted argument, rinsing and repeating the same "points" over and over again, until - MUCH to my annoyance - The Don agreed to give him another $10 off the desk just to shut him up.
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