Money

I gotta tell ya...it has been a certain amount of time since I've had a job in retail and, not surprisingly, very few things about the genre has changed much. With the exception of an attitude of entitlement that I have not encountered before. Now perhaps it's the home improvement area or just social changes in general, but I am appalled at the latest trend in annoying customers.

The other morning I had a gentleman present me with a coupon that had expired the day before. When I informed him of this expiration he asked me if I couldn't accept it anyway. I informed him that the expiration date was pretty firm and I was not allowed to accept it by company policy. At which point the gentleman informed me that he tried to use the coupon a few days prior but we didn't have what he was looking for so he should be allowed to use that coupon now on completely different items. My manager, who had been standing nearby, came over and explained that the computer system will not allow us to accept expired coupons, it just can't be done. Then the customer asked us to please override this function and when we politely told him that was beyond our capability (like we would at this point even if we could) he got extremely sour. When I finished the transaction (yes, he still paid for the products) and wished him a nice day, he not so politely told me "Well it certainly hasn't started out that way!"

Just yesterday a customer came through with a shop vac. For those of you following the news, it's kinda wet around these parts and shop vacs have been almost as popular as sump pumps. As I was ringing up the shop vac, the customer informed me that it was supposed to be on sale for ten dollars less. There was no sign on the merchandise nor any fliers anywhere. The gentleman informed me that he had the ad cut out of the paper and it was just sitting there on the kitchen table where he forgot it. Uh huh. Well, it turns out that the shop vac had indeed been on sale and the sale had ended the day before (are we detecting a theme). The customer then asked us to honor the shop vac sale price because he had been too busy working and couldn't get to the store before now. Uh huh. When informed that this was just something the store couldn't do, he became very upset and berated us (not to the point where I could refuse to wait on him, just enough to make me stop smiling and start thinking up retorts) because we certainly didn't care about the working man. [here's where I interject the part about him being in a dress shirt, tie and a Rolex with the cleanest nails for a working man I've ever seen] I informed him that Lowe's opens at 6:00 a.m. every morning and closes at 9:00 p.m. every night and thanked him very much and wished him the best possible evening.

Don't get me wrong. I believe in the adage that "it never hurts to ask" and most people are perfectly content to play within the rules. But I honestly don't get the arrogance of a handful of people who believe that expiration dates and company policy don't apply to them. Do what the rest of us do. If you don't have a coupon, don't demand a discount. If you have an expired coupon, don't expect a store to honor it. The STORE LOSES MONEY on expired coupons, people. If the sale ended, it's over. Deal with it. And when an employee tells you, "sorry, no can do", don't stand there and berate the peon for not getting fired. You are NOT worth getting written up for.

And while you're at it, please have a really nice day.