Price changes

[notlovinit]

My store recently raised all the prices on 90% of the menu. I had to go out to the menu board and change them all and that was basically the only reason I knew about it. Almost everyone else was informed the day the price changes took place, if at all.

I was working prep (making salads and such) the day the prices took effect. I was in the back most of the day, but I went up front to bring the MOD something and I overheard this exchange:

Cashier "Okay, your total is $X.XX."
SC "What?! It's normally $X.YY."
Cashier "I know, but we just recently had a price change."
SC "Well, that is just crap. It's not even that you raised your prices, but you can't tell anyone first?!"

I then step in, because even though I wasn't the MOD, I am still a manager and I make a joke about how none of us knew it was happening either, so it's just as much a bummer to us as to her. She paid and I don't know if she was necessarily happy, but she shut up and stopped blaming the goddamn cashier for the price increase.

Later that day our DM came in and I told her about this and joked that next time we should hand out flyers advertising our price increase. DM completely IGNORES my attempt at a joke and starts talking to me about how to retain customers as if the lady had just walked off. She starts saying how not to let anyone leave over ten cents. First of all, Miss DM, none of the increases were ten cents, they were all fifty cents or more. Secondly, how exactly am I going to discount 10 cents off an order? We don't exactly have that option. I can discount in dollar increments. (and then get accused of stealing by you and the owner) I guess if they are paying cash I can make a drawer short ten cents, but what if they are paying with a card? The machine only accepts full payment and we cannot enter specific amounts on our system like you can on other systems. You're just stupid and I miss our old DM.


This also reminds me of a story from the thrift store. We had recently been pushed by corporate to start pricing items higher. Okey dokey. I get a lady at my register complaining about the prices being so high and could I pass her complaint on to corporate? What I SHOULD have said was "Sure, I'll let them know." and then stopped. Especially since she complained in the perfect way. She didn't blame me and she politely asked me to pass his complaint along to the appropriate people. What I actually said was "Sure, I'll let them know, but I don't think it will do any good."
Yeah, I don't know wtf I was thinking either. I think I was still going through my futile effort of educating customers how businesses really work.
To her credit she did not get sucky, but she could not for the life of her understand why corporate wouldn't listen to the single solitary customer that wanted prices lowered. It was like she honestly believed that if I passed on her complaint to them they would go "Oh great idea, we don't care about our bottom line at all." (We were a for profit thrift store.) and then automatically implement this change in all stores across the nation. It was actually really comical how wide her eyes got when she realized that the store wanted to make money. She tried a bunch of different arguments like "You really don't think they will listen to me?" and "I thought this was a non profit store?"
Customer educated successfully.

However, if I hadn't been the suckiest manager that that store ever saw I would have stopped at "Sure, I will let them know."
I'm a much better manager at my current job.

[emax4]

Eesh.. I would have liked to have seen her reaction had I responded with, "M'am, when you go to the gas station, do the attendants rush out to tell you that their prices have gone up? ??? ??? No?? Well, heh, it pretty much works the same way here..."

It's one thing if it's alcoholic drinks at a restaurant raise their prices and not tell anyone, and the customers that order don't bother asking the price. Still, it's hard to believe that the woman can't tell that one number is higher than another. I know some places make items without the items being on the menu (look up Wendy's Meat Cube, or go to Bravo and ask for their Chicken Griglia), but this one takes the cake.

[Athaelia]

Later that day our DM came in and I told her about this and joked that next time we should hand out flyers advertising our price increase. DM completely IGNORES my attempt at a joke and starts talking to me about how to retain customers as if the lady had just walked off. She starts saying how not to let anyone leave over ten cents.

OK, this pisses me off. Your DM sounds like a major DoucheMuffin (or for only $.50 extra, make it a large DoucheMuffin with fries and a coke, what a deal!)

She is the one who needs to be schooled about retaining customers. At stores I've seen signs that say something along the lines of "due to the shortage of asses and the rising prices of hats, we must regrettably raise the price of our asshat deluxe.."

Warning is always nice. But I guess sometimes surprises happen. The DM seems more of a problem to me than the customer (as a former cashier, I used to just block out price complaints knowing it wasn't my problem or my fault) Sounds like she made a crappy management decision and made you guys the scapegoats, and threw some sort of illogical, nonsensical banter about " 10 cents" in the mix. What a beotch.

[rose_metal_nz]

I think you handled the customer perfectly, myself. The DM sounds like they're not on the same planet as you

[Anthelle]

"due to the shortage of asses and the rising prices of hats, we must regrettably raise the price of our asshat deluxe.."

Sadly there'll never be a shortage of asses.

Couldn't agree more about the DM, I hate when people critize you based on a fantasy land world veiw about what is possible to do.

[notlovinit]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of our DM either. The ONLY good thing about her is that if someone does something worth punishment she will punish them, whereas the old DM and my store manager won't punish anyone. But other than that, she sucks. I miss our old DM soooo much.

Proof that our current DM sucks more than anyone could possibly suck:
MOD got a customer complaint while on shift about an order being messed up. Customer wants MOD to deliver to him the correct food. MOD explains how we cannot do that. Customer calls DM and DM backs up customer. MOD gets suspended for a week for having a rude complaint (the customer said the MOD was rude) and was told to deliver the food next time. WTF? But then I'm not 100% sure that this is DM's fault. I think our owner is just getting really stupid, because at our Holiday Party the owner told us all to deliver correct food if we had to. Uhm, what?! We don't have insurance for that dumbass. If we get in a wreck while doing this, you are opening yourself up for a lot of lawsuits. Or if we get to angry customer's house and they assault us? Not to mention, a lot of the workers don't have cars to do this. What if the only person on duty that has one is the MOD? She can't leave the store unsupervised. Are you saying she should lend out her car to one of the crew people to do this? I'm just not even sure what runs through their minds.

[emax4]

What if you had said, "I was following policy from the handbook and explaining things the way we were taught, and now you're saying it wasn't good enough. Do you think YOUR manager would be happy with your response to me?"

Seriously... too often I shoot my mouth off without thinking that all management ranks have rules and goals, but from a worker's standpoint; if you know the rules, you know you're doing it the way it was taught to you, sometimes you just wanna go over the DM's head and complain to THEIR Supervisor.

[MadMike]

Later that day our DM came in and I told her about this and joked that next time we should hand out flyers advertising our price increase.

"We're not just talking about inflation, we're doing something about it! We're raising our prices!"

[RootedPhoenix]

By this dingbat's logic, I should have told the entire universe when I raised my jewelry prices. Silly me.

At least if someone complains, they're talking to the one who can change something, instead of badgering some poor cashier....

[CaptainThrifty]

We have the same problem with our thrift store customers complaining about the prices being high. We constantly tell them two things. One, our prices are set by the corporate HQ so we don't have any real say on them and two, they can complain, but that we are making the goals corporate set for us so the prices must be low enough that most people are buying enough to make those high goals.