Not Quite The Sun-Cream Of The Crop

(My store is a parcel collection point, so customers can have their parcels sent to the store to pick up. A customer comes up to the customer service desk and asks to pick up his parcel and gives his name, so I go in the back to find it. After searching for a few minutes, the assistant manager comes to help. He tells me to ask the customer if it’s big or small, and the customer informs me it’s a small box containing a few bottles of sun cream and lip balm. I tell the assistant manager exactly that.)

Assistant Manager: “Wait… Sun cream?”

Me: “Yeah, and lip balm, so it’s a small box.”

Assistant Manager: “Oh no… Oh God no… I opened it…”

Me: “Wait, what? Why did you open it?”

Assistant Manager: “I didn’t see a customer name on it, it just said the company name, so I thought it was for us! I shared the sun cream with everyone and used the lip balm! The bottles are still in the office, I can make this work…”

Me: “WHAT? You used it?! Why would head office send us that stuff? What are we going to do?”

Assistant Manager: *starts digging through the bins outside* “I’ll find the box and you can scan it through, we can still give it to him… I can’t find the box, so this paper will do.” *starts wrapping the half-empty sun cream bottles and used lip balm in brown paper and coating it in tape*

Me: “You can’t give it to him! He’s going to notice and complain! The seal is broken and everything!”

Assistant Manager: “It’s fine, just give him this, tell him to check it’s all there without actually giving it to him until he’s signed for it, it’ll be completely fine.”

Me: “No, no, no. You opened it, you’re telling the customer what happened. I’m not getting involved any more.”

Assistant Manager: “All right, I’ll do it.”

(I stayed within earshot of the transaction with the customer, and lo and behold, he didn’t tell him it was used! He told the customer the box was damaged in transit and repackaged it. The customer checked there were three bottles and the lip balm and took it! I hope he comes back to complain!)