She Made A Complete Display Of Herself

It’s my third day of work, and I’m working the register at a store when an elderly woman and her daughter come up to my register.

Elderly Customer: “I’d like to purchase this, but I can’t find the price. Can you look it up for me?”

Me: “Absolutely!”

We’ve been trained on how to find the price of an item without a tag, using a UPC code that is printed on every item we sell in some shape or form. I cannot for the life of me find the code, nor can I figure out what this item is.

Me: “I’m so sorry, ma’am, but I can’t seem to find any sort of code or marking on this item. I’m also having difficulty figuring out what it is. Let me page a manager to help me, since I’m still fairly new.”

Elderly Customer: “That’s fine. I had to take some things off of it to grab it. But I’m in no rush. We can wait.” 

My manager comes over to help me.

Me: “This woman would like to purchase this item, but I can’t find a price or UPC code. I also have no idea what this is, so I wouldn’t have any idea which department to page for a price check.”

Manager: *Quietly, to me* “That’s because this is a display unit we use in the kitchen section.” *At regular volume, to the customer* “Ma’am, where exactly did you find this?”

Elderly Customer: “It was over where you have all the plates. I had to take a bunch of plates off of this to bring it up here.”

Manager: “Ma’am, this isn’t for sale. You took apart a display unit.”

Elderly Customer: “Oh, well, how was I supposed to know?”

Manager: “That’s fine. I’ll just take that back to where it was supposed to be.”

My manager walks off with the counter-top dish rack display unit to take it back to the proper area.

Elderly Customer: ” I need something like that anyway. Do you sell anything like that here?”

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I don’t believe we do.”

Elderly Customer: “Well, shoot. Anyway, I have this other item that I couldn’t find a price on, either. Could you check the price of this for me?”

She pulled a store decoration out of her cart — one that belonged to the store and was used for decoration and was not for sale. All I could do was facepalm as her daughter looked utterly mortified.