I noticed that a family was in the store for a long time. Given that it was Christmas time, I didn’t think too much of it until it came time to check them out. The family split up and the daughter came up first with her items.
As I rang them up, I began noticing that the clearance tag SKUs weren’t matching the original tags. Immediately, I knew what was happening: switched tickets. I began nonchalantly pulling the clearance tags off and scanning the original prices.
Customer: “Oh, that’s not on clearance?”
Me: “No, the price is $44.99, not $2.99.”
Customer: “Okay, I’ll leave that.”
This same conversation happened about ten more times with different items; she kept some and left some. She paid and waited for her mother.
Eventually, the mother came up and proceeded to load her items on the counter. Unsurprisingly, the same thing happened, and I proceeded to do the exact same thing, taking all the switched tickets off and scanning the original prices. At this point, they weren’t protesting the so-called clearance prices. The mother paid and moved over.
For the last transaction, the daughter decided to purchase some of the items she had put back because of “wrong pricing”. When I finished scanning, the total came up to about $345. If I would have ignored the switched tags, their total would have been roughly $76.
Customer: *Swipes card: DECLINED*
Customer: *Swipes card: DECLINED*
Customer: *Swipes card: DECLINED*
Customer: “Why is the total so high? I only got four items.”
Me: “There are eighteen items in this transaction; I rang up eighteen items.”
Customer: “No, you added things on there that we are not getting.”
Me: “No, I didn’t.”
I proceeded to look through the bags and pull out items they had stuffed in previously purchased bags.
Customer: “No, those items were already paid for.”
I was completely fed up with the arguing at this point and snapped.
Me: “Look. Switching the tags on almost all your previous transaction items was enough. We are not doing this.”
Cue the shocked face from the customer because I had just called her out on their bulls***. She began to argue again and ended up shoving the items at me; they still had the other twelve unpaid-for items stuffed in other items they had purchased.
I told them to have a good night.
Customer: “Just to let you know, it’s horrible customer service to accuse someone of stealing.”
Me: “Merry Christmas.”
The customers set the alarm off as they left. Oops, I must have “forgotten” to take a security tag off.
The family was escorted back in by security, and I proceeded to go through every bag to find the sensor and take out the items that weren’t paid for by reconciling them with their two previous receipts.
They stayed in the parking lot until we closed, roughly two hours later. I called the police to do a parking lot patrol at midnight. They left.
