Petty Revenge For Christmas

A few days before Christmas, a man comes into the store where I am working as a returns clerk. He has several hundred dollars worth of Christmas decorations.

Customer: “I bought these decorations in late October, and I’d like to return them so I can buy them back at your clearance price.”

Me: “I can process this return for you, but I can’t sell them back to you at the clearance price.”

Customer: “Are you serious?! Do you have any idea how much I spend in your store on a monthly basis?! Call your manager now!”

My store manager is a terrible person and mostly can’t be counted on to back up the staff. But this time, the customer pisses him off.

Manager: “Sir, the trade-off to shopping for Christmas décor early is that you get a wide selection but you pay full price. If you wait for clearance, you get whatever pickings are left but you pay the sale price. You cannot, however, have it both ways.”

Customer: “This is ridiculous! Why can’t you just sell them back to me?! Just do it or I’ll call corporate!”

We know corporate would force us to do the return AND the re-sale, so when he makes that threat, we tell him we’ll do the return. I process the return and hand each item to my store manager, who loads everything in a cart. The whole time, the customer keeps making smug remarks about getting his way.

Finally, the return is done, and my store manager starts to wheel the cart away toward the stock room and unloading dock.

Customer: “Hey, I’m going to buy that stuff! Where are you going?!”

Manager: “Oh! Store policy, sir, is that seasonal returns have to be processed by our inventory manager first before they can be restocked or resold. But you can come back tomorrow!”

This was mostly a lie, but we weren’t about to let this smug jerk have his way. The customer was so mad! He cussed us out and then left.

He did come back the next day, expecting to find all his stuff restocked in the clearance aisle. But his attitude had pissed [Manager] off so thoroughly that [Manager] had told our stocking crew to only put one of that man’s items out on the shelf per day, and if they forgot to do it at all, that was fine, too.

The customer came in a few times and ranted to us — especially me — about getting his stuff, but after a few days he stopped coming, and we eventually put all that stuff out on clearance again.