Monday, July 16, 2007

Beachy keen

All Service Desk associates know that summertime means weekend rentals. While airbeds are always a popular rental item, beach items start coming back after sundown on Saturdays and Sundays starting in late May.

Sunday, this guy comes up with a beach umbrella that they didn't even dust the sand off of before jamming back into the plastic cover. I can see shells and sand all over the place and when he takes the wadded up receipt out of his pocket, it is nearly obliterated by seawater.

I hold back a sigh and do his return. Of course we can't sell the umbrella again, so I print out a defective slip. I write on the defective slip "Customer used and returned" and tape it to the umbrella and then hit the rest of the buttons to give him the cash back.

He decides to read the defective slip upside down and take offense at what I wrote.

"No man, the real reason is that it fell over when we put it up."

Uhh, OK. Whatever. You're still a tool. And it is still not broken. And you were going to return it anyway.

But I don't argue. "Here's your $21 dollars and change sir. Sign here."

He leaves, but not before giving me another dirty look. Dude, seriously, you're not cute enough for me to care about.

My personal favorite rental-and-return will always be the Coleman cooler some guy returned that still had beach sand all over it and the water from the ice still inside. They never took the sticker off. I looked at the receipt and there were even two suitcases of beer on t here.

I asked him "Have a good time?" and he at least had the decency to blush before answering "Hell yeah man. I feel bad for you guys cooped up in here."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the paint sprayer returns that people do. Only they don't bother to empty out the old paint and the service desk at my store doesn't even look inside the product so of course you guessed it, it goes back on the shelf WITH paint still inside the sprayer.

Erin Bradley said...

This past weekend I had to buy a granny cart to move something. You guys know what I'm talking about? One of those folding wire carts New Yorkers sometimes use to carry groceries?

Yea. It costs $35 dollars and I knew I was only going to use it once. ONCE. I'm moving and just had to put down a huge security deposit. I need every dime I can get.

I didn't do it, but I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a few seconds where I was tempted.

Heidi said...

Have you ever returned a sopping wet swimsuit?

When I worked in the swimwear & coats department of an upscale department store during college, a girl returned a swimsuit that she wore for the weekend while she was staying at a hotel in town. I was going to call a manager because I didn't think we'd take back a WET suit, but I figured the manager would just make me look like an a$$ so I just returned it. (By the way, the suit was over $70 and this was 10 years ago...)

When the manager saw the wet suit in the return closet, she was pi$$ed and completely chewed me out. She said "we do not take back swimsuits that people rented for the weekend!"

Um, yeah, whatever. But we'd take back DRY swimsuits they wore ALL freaking summer!

Anonymous said...

I would not convict you for blasting him in the mug with a shotgun. No chance.