Sunday, August 12, 2007

Give us this day our daily bread

The time to complain that cashier Belinda "smashed" your bread by dropping seven cans of beans on top of it is before you leave the store.

Or at the register. Go ahead. Get off the phone, quit talking to your best friend Quantice about this tripping party you went to, put down that issue of US Weekly that you're reading for free (Girl, what is Britney and LiLo up to?) and stop yelling at your troop of howler monkeys rolling around on their wheelies. Call the cashier on their stupidity. If they really are bagging your bread with cans, they deserve whatever you dish out.

The INCORRECT time to complain is after you've rolled your groceries out to the car, unpacked them, and then decide to come back up to Customer Service - WITHOUT THE BREAD - and then try to get some free bread and hot dog rolls.

First, the woman says she wants to make a complaint about the cashier at Register 10 - because they crushed her bread when they bagged it. OK. Fine. Whatever. I never worked on a register that much, but I would make a minimal effort to take care of the bread & eggs. Everything else I just dumped in a sack. If they wanted it to be treated special, they needed to speak up or get one of their kids to start bagging.

Next, she wants her money back on the bread. My co-worker wanders over and asks her where the bread is. "Oh, it's in the car. I didn't think I needed to bring it back in." Because the concepts of RETURN & EXCHANGE sprang into being fully formed and never once involved an actual product being returned or exchanged. Duh!

So I tell her that she needs to bring the bread in before she can get a refund on it. "But it is crushed." Then we'll send it back to the Food Claims Center and get someone to talk to the cashier.
"Can't I just get my money back?" Not without the bread.

"Can I just get a new loaf of bread?" Not without bringing in the old loaf of bread.

"But that one is no good. Why do I have to bring it in? Can't I just keep it?" Well ..... Bentonville, we have a problem. She was either trying to scam free bread or she seriously thought we were going to let her have the money AND the "damaged loaf."

She finally gets a clue that it is not going to happen and trots off. She bounces back up a few minutes later with two loaves of bread with a small dent in the top and a package of hot dog buns. None of them look abused. Heck, I've seen worse damage from people throwing stuff around in their cart - and with a $400 grocery bill, I doubt the bread was treated like bone china every step of the way.

So we exchange the bread for her. And then she asks again "Are you sure I can't just take those? You're probably just going to throw them out."

NO. Still no. Still going to be no tomorrow too.

I hope every single piece of toast you make for the next two weeks burns to a crisp. And ants invade your picnic.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

WOW! Running a scam for free bread! Who would have thunk?? Please people try and run a scam on expensive items you can sell on your stolen table at The Swap Shop. =)

Anonymous said...

Some idiot, somewhere, gave her the old loaf back and she thinks it is standard.

Can anyone say "entitlement"

peacemongermom said...

Hee! The number of people who were APPALLED by the fact that we would toss out their photos in the photo shop if they said they didn't want them! And then I would always get the "but you're just going to throw them away! why can't I have them?" argument.

You can't have them, I would patiently explain, because you didn't pay for them. If you want me to put the piddly eight cents or whatever it is back on your bill, that's fine. You can have them.

Oh, the arguments that we would get.

I am SO GLAD I don't deal with the mass public on a daily basis now.

Heidi said...

So we exchange the bread for her. And then she asks again "Are you sure I can't just take those? You're probably just going to throw them out."

I absolutely HATE people like this! We used to have them at the salon all the time... They would complain about a product like shampoo and then say, "Oh, you're actually going to take it back? Can't I just get my money back? I mean, you can't sell it again because I've used it and you're probably just going to throw it away so why can't I just keep it?"

Hmmm...then WHY ARE YOU COMPLAINING ABOUT IT if you want to KEEP IT!?? I feel your pain...

clarkins said...

Probably the same person who goes into (fast food joint name here) at 5 minutes til closing and orders something inexpensive and asks for the food they're going to throw away at the end of the night.

Anonymous said...

I would have put the bread on the floor and smashed it flat with my foot then handed it to her and said "Your your bread".

Anonymous said...

@ clark:

Nothing wrong with free food if you're not actually scamming it. If it really is going to be thrown out *and* you're not doing something underhanded (like returning an item and keeping it) why not? If I were working fast food, and were allowed to give away the stale stuff, I'd give it to people even if they didn't make a purchase. But that's just me...

I suppose you could say "well, they would have bought it if it weren't free". Maybe so, but I don't own the place. And if I did, there wouldn't be much food to trash at the end of the day anyways. ;-)

Anonymous said...

I worked for Pizza Hut & there were many, many nights my son & I had leftover pizza for dinner. Whatever was left on the buffet table when we cleaned up was up for grabs, so I always tried to make sure there was a thin veggie lover's cooked at the end of buffet time, hehehe, whether we needed it or not. If tips were not good that was the best way to stretch the money.