Employing Not Always Right Customers

(I am sitting in a social committee meeting with some coworkers, discussing company tickets to a baseball game. We recently sent out the company-wide invitation to sign up for free tickets. Note that I am the only person in the meeting who is not a supervisor. While we are discussing this, I have my laptop open, and see that I have an email about the tickets, so I read it to the group.)

Me: *reading the email from an employee I barely see* “Are the tickets general admission?”

Supervisor #1: “Is that [Employee]?”

(Everyone stops to look at her in surprise.)

Me: “Yes, it is.”

Supervisor #2: “How did you know?”

Supervisor #1: “She’s in my department. She sells everything she gets from our company. Tickets, prizes, shirts. One time I got a call from HR because she had posted free tickets from the company on our own classifieds page!”

Supervisor #3: “What? Not even on Craigslist?”

Supervisor #1: “I also sometimes see her wearing clothes from the company store that still have the price tag hanging off them. I tell her about the tag and then she tapes it to her arm so it doesn’t flap around. Then she brags about how she just returns the clothes later! She does it with Kohl’s and Amazon, too. An $8 t-shirt from Kohl’s!”

Supervisor #2: “That’s crazy! It doesn’t seem worth it.”

Supervisor #3: “I see her in t-shirts and jeans a lot around the office, and flip-flops, too. Is she allowed to do that?”

Supervisor #1: “Nope. I have to talk to her about that all the time, but she just doesn’t care. You know, I’ve even heard her coaching her sister on how to keep price tags on purses so they can return them later. They’ll buy Coach bags, fly to Germany for Oktoberfest, then come back and return them! She also brags about taking expired coupons and waving them in cashiers’ faces and screaming at them so they’ll give her the discount just to get rid of her.”

(We were all greatly entertained by this gossip, but we were also horrified by how willing the employee was to share information about this dishonest behavior with her boss!)