Unfiltered Story #217713

So, my job sells engraveable gifts (most of which, we engrave in store) and one day, as I’m getting everything that’s due at my clock-out time finished, this older man (about late 60s) comes in and starts looking at clocks. He picks one out and takes it to another girl I’m working with at the time, who then goes to check our inventory in the computer. The display he is holding (which is right out of the box, brand new, absolutely noscratches or dings or ANYTHING wrong with it) is the last one left. So the man asks if there is any discount for it. The other girl is sort of new and doesnt know all of our policies yet, whereas I’ve been there a few years and know that if there is nothing wrong with a display product, that it remains full price. So she asks me and i relay this policy to the man. He then asks if there is a box for the item. Now, our corporate office doesn’t really allow us to keep all of the boxes for all of the product on display as there’s nowhere to keep those boxes because we are a tiny store and our back room is the size of a postage stamp. I tell the man that the original boxing was most likely discarded because of this policy, however, we are given foldable boxes and can make a box to fit this display. He turns his nose up at it after having me build one for him and then continues to look for issues with the clock, for some sort of discount, and tells me that there must be something wrong with the clock because “it was working a second ago and now it’s not” (later on in this story we saw this wasn’t true because we took the facing out and looked at the back of the clock and discovered it couldn’t have been working because there was plastic still on the backing and the removable battery tab was still in place). So I told him that perhaps the battery had run out, but we should have a spare. Which he then asked how to get the face off to change the battery. I informed him that I would be right back and walked into the back room where the manager was finishing a call with another customer and inform her of the situation. In case anyone doesn’t know, many clocks inset into a block of wood (like this one) come with a suction cup (and for us they’re usually all exactly the same since most of our clocks are the same brand) to get the face off and we had plenty of spare suction cups for this kind of thing. The old man also pointed out there were no instructions with the display which I could see as fair point, so when I went back to the back room, I also asked my store manager if there was anything to do. She grabbed a spare suction cup and walked out front with me to show this man and (since she is the only one authorized to and this is the standard thing to do in this kind of situation) offered him a 10% discount. She also informed him that she still had the instructions and accompanying pieces for said clock and she could supply him with those, or she could have another location transfer a brand new one, box and all, to our location free of charge and have it there the next day. That’s fair right? Apparently not. This man said he didn’t feel like waiting for another one nor did he want anything else she offered to make it okay (even pick a different clock of lesser price that we had more of, with all of the pieces). He instead decided he wanted 25% off of a $55 clock because he had to ask one question about how to get a face of a clock off to change the battery because the instructions where still in the back at this point. (Really, he just wanted the clock but didnt want to pay the asked price for it and wanted to haggle, which we don’t do. He was very nasty and snobbish about the entire situation, saying how if we let him walk out that door with anything but what he wants, or nothing at all, that we were a bad business that doesn’t know what we’re doing) My manager politely proceeded to tell him that while she was barred from giving more than a 10% discount for lack of the original packaging (which is really all this is) she could try calling customer care and seeing what they say. He insisted she do that and, of course, as we all suspected after speaking with them, (thank you customer care), seeing as there was absolutely bothing wrong with the display item (at this point we had gotten the face off and saw that all the plastic pieces including the battery tab were still in place) and that all pieces (instructions, extra battery, suction cup) aside from the original box were accounted for, 10% Is the only discount we can offer. My manager lets the man know this and he then proceeds to tell us we know nothing about business and if we did we wouldn’t have let him go and given up a $55 sale (which, again, is flawed because it wouldn’t be $55 at all seeing as he wanted 25% off for a near-perfect, brand new clock) and then storms out and we all start laughing. Basically he wanted us to risk losing our job to give him a discount we we’re not authorized to give, for nothing, all because he had to ask a question and refused any other option we came up with that really could have fixed it.