Hamming it up

I hate Sundays, especially Sunday mornings, because working the early shift precludes going out the night before, unless I want to drag in looking like death on a cracker. And some days, it is all I can do to get to work on time, much less at 7 a.m. And when the 9 a.m. person doesn't show up for work, that means I'm stuck working at Customer Service all by myself for at least four hours on a Sunday morning.

So there's always a line becuase people who don't shop during the week come out of the woodwork on Sundays. I'm doing returns when this woman walks up with six packages of ham, salami and turkey from the deli.

She throws it on the counter in my general direction and goes "Read the date on this label."

I give her a look, but I go "Ma'am, it says sell by Nov. 19."


HER: "Now what day is it?"
ME: "November 19th."
HER: "Are they trying to sell me bad meat?"
ME: "Ma'am, it says sell by Nov. 19th. Today is the 19th. You can still sell the meat today. Do you want to return this ham?"
HER: "I haven't even bought it yet, but I don't want to pay full price for this meat." And now we get to the point of the discussion.
ME: "Ma'am, I can't mark deli items down. You can buy the meat or not, but I can't give you a discount just because it is close to the sell-by date."
So I get a dirty look and she stomps off.

Like 20 minutes later, I see an assistant manager and I tell her what happened. She calls the deli and sure enough, no one has changed the date on the label printer for three days. All this meat is perfectly good and in no danger of spoiling.

And the assistant manager pages the woman back to customer service and offers to let her have the meat for half-price, because she did make a point about the sell-by date.

So the woman comes back. The assistant manager tells her that the meat is perfectly good. The problem was with the label machine, which had not had the date changed. And that the woman can get a discount on all the luncheon meat she had the deli slice for her.

Instead of being gracious and taking the meat at a discount, the woman starts angling for a FURTHER price reduction. She argues with the assistant manager for a while about "Every time I get meat here it is bad. It always goes bad early. I think it made my son sick one time. I don't like to shop here because I think the meat is bad." OKAY. If the meat from the deli is so bad, why did you just have them cut six packages - almost two full pounds of ham, salami and turkey - for you!

The manager finally realizes what I realized when the woman first walked up. The customer is just making stuff up to get a discount on the meat. So the manager brings the meat back up to me, says "Give her half off. If she takes it, fine. If she doesn't, fine. I've got work to do."