(I’m of Indian descent but first-generation Canadian with no accent — unless you call Canadian an accent, which I don’t. We take calls from other Canadians in the same province as us. This is a regular occurrence:)
Me: “Thank you for calling; how can I help you?”
Customer: “Oh! Thank God you’re not Indian!”
Me “…”
Customer: “I have to return these binders my kids didn’t need for school. I don’t have the receipt.”
Me: “Did you maybe get the receipt emailed to you?”
Customer: “No.”
Me: “Hmm. Normally, we could look up the receipt with the SKU of the item and verify it with your card number, but we have sold so many of these binders in the last few weeks it would take us forever to find it. Without a receipt, the register will only let me give you a store credit for the lowest price it’s been sold at in the last 90 days, and these were buy-one-get-one-free recently, so I know they’re going to come up at a penny. Do you want to try looking for your receipt and coming back?”
Customer: “Well, can’t you just scan them and see?”
Me: “Okay.” *scans them and they all come up at a penny* “No, it won’t let me give you anything for them, unfortunately.”
Customer: “Well, what if I just buy new ones and use that receipt to return them?”
Me: *hesitantly* “That’s… fraud…”
Customer: “How is that fraud?”
Me: “Because you’re using a new receipt to return something old. And they’re not on sale anymore, so if you originally bought them on sale, you would be getting more money back than what you paid for them. Plus, you would still be stuck with binders you don’t want, anyway.”
Customer: “Why?”
Me: “Because you would have twice as many binders as you have on your receipt.”
Customer: “Well, I would just go to another store to return the other ones.”
Me: “You can’t do that.”
Customer: “Why not?”
Me: “You can’t return something twice with the same receipt.”
Customer: “It’s not fraud just because I can’t find my receipt!”
Me: “No, but trying to buy new ones and return them all at the new price is fraud. Are you sure you can’t just find your receipt?”
(She leaves and calls the store to talk to a manager — I’m pretty sure she is just calling from the parking lot — and the manager says we can try looking her receipt up. She comes back in immediately and my manager can’t find her receipt.)
Manager: “I can’t find the receipt. And these binders have had different sale prices during the back to school time, and they’re expensive, so I can’t just return them without a receipt.”
Customer: “Can’t you just scan ones from the shelf, then? So they don’t ring up as a penny?”
Manager: “They’re the same binders.”
Customer: “But the ones I’ve brought in ring up as a penny. Can’t you just scan new ones so they scan at full price?”
Manager: “No, they’re the same binders; they will still ring up at a penny. The register does it automatically when there isn’t a receipt.”
Customer: “I don’t understand why can’t just give me what I paid for them!”
Manager: “Because you don’t have a receipt… which tells us what you paid for them…”
The city I live in recently decided to cut costs by closing one high school and merging the student population. We got a new school name and all moved to [Location #1] so they could renovate [Location #2].
The renovations were supposed to be completed before I graduated grade eight, so I was never going to attend classes at [Location #1]. Unfortunately, renovations took extra long and I spent my grade nine year at [Location #1].
Around May of this year, the school board said that we were three years overtime and 16 million dollars over budget — they wanted everything to look nice — so they decided to move us all early and let the construction crew work while we were in classes. The money they got from selling [Location #2] would, in theory, help the budget.
This caused many issues. First of all, music classes were in an empty room that was supposed to be a French room. The music class during my French class had no idea how to play, so all of our lessons were to the tune of off-key trumpets and tubas.
Secondly, the cafeteria was nowhere near ready to sell food. The local church sold $5 hotdogs in their parking lot — $2.50 if you attend their church! — but that meant most of the kids at my school ate a hotdog for lunch every day and had for weeks.
On top of that, the power randomly went out during classes, fire alarms weren’t all wired right, and none of the science classrooms were fully unpacked — most of the test tubes were broken in the move, anyway — and many other problems.
Today, we arrived at school to find the second-floor girls’ bathroom off-limits. When I asked my math teacher, he told me — dead serious, other teachers have confirmed — “Half the ceiling caved in.” But since they sold [Location #1], we are stuck at [Location #2].
This story was related to me by one of my friends who is a bit “special.”
My friend was driving on a two-lane highway late at night and came to a stop sign. As she drove up to the stop sign, she looked in her mirror and saw there was a car behind her. She immediately panicked and thought the car behind her wasn’t going to stop, so she went through the stop sign without even slowing down.
That’s when the car behind her put on its lights and sirens.
After the cop pulled her over she tried to explain to him that she had thought that he wasn’t going to stop and was going to crash into her. The officer asked her if she thought that he was driving unsafely. She said yes.
She got a ticket for running the stop sign, but to this day she can’t understand why the police officer wouldn’t accept her excuse.
(We recently had new signage and accents installed in the store. The associate taking over for me comes in ten minutes before her shift and my supervisor asks her what she thinks of the new looks.)
Associate #1: “It’s nice. I like the grey.”
Supervisor: “Grey? What’s grey?”
Associate #1: “The border around the wall there.”
Supervisor: “That’s black.”
Me: “That’s definitely grey.”
Supervisor: “No, but it’s the same colour as that sign there!”
Me & Associate #1: “Yeah, that’s grey, too.”
Supervisor: “No way! No, there’s no way!”
Me: *pointing to a black frame* “That frame around that sign there, that’s black.”
Supervisor: “They’re the same colour! I think you guys are playing with me! Ask a customer what colour it is!”
(There are no customers at the front of the store so I go onto the headset.)
Me: *on headset* “Hey, what colour is the new border around the front of the store that used to be blue?”
Associate #2: *on headset* “Um, grey? Why?”
Me: *on headset* “[Supervisor] thinks it’s black.”
Associate #3: *on headset* “It’s definitely grey.”
Supervisor: “No way! I can’t believe this! It’s BLACK!” *steps back, farther away from it, and looks at it from a distance* “Okay, I think I see it now. It’s like a light black.”
Me & Associate #1: “So… grey.”
Supervisor: “No! It’s black!”
(A customer comes up to the front.)
Customer: “What are you looking at?”
Me: “We’re just deciding what colour we think that border is.”
Customer: “It’s grey.”
(I tell the story to my boyfriend. The next day, he comes into the store and goes up to my supervisor with an item.)
Boyfriend: “Excuse me. Do you know if you carry this item in light black?”
