Several years ago, I was on the tills on Boxing Day, and the queues were huge as everyone wanted to shop the post-Christmas sales. In more recent years, the store stopped processing returns and exchanges on Boxing Day, but that was after this interaction took place.
A man had queued up seemingly patiently and finally got to my till. He took a pair of men’s boots from a carrier bag and put them down more firmly than was necessary.
Customer: “My son got these boots yesterday, and the sole’s coming off!”
I politely asked him if he had the receipt, but they were a gift, so he didn’t. No big deal; if they were faulty, he could get a refund of the current selling price without a receipt.
He was obviously annoyed and proceeded to complain about the poor quality of the shoes, the time he had spent queuing, and so on, while I tried to find a label on the shoes. All the while, I was thinking that the boots didn’t look quite right to me. We sold women’s, men’s, and children’s clothes, shoes, and accessories, and I was in no way an expert on every last item we stocked, but these just didn’t match any styles I was aware of.
Eventually, I found a label tucked into the lining of one boot. It had the label from a different store in the shopping centre.
I showed it to the customer.
Me: “These are from [Other Shop].”
He looked at me. He looked at the enormous posters behind the till, which all had the shop’s name and branding on them. He grabbed the boots and shoved them back in the bag.
Customer: *Mumbling* “I thought I was in [Other Shop].”
And off he went, presumably to spend an equal amount of time queuing in the right shop.
To be fair, [Other Shop] sold men’s and womenswear — plus shoes, obviously — was also split over two levels, and was maybe five or six shops fronts down from us. But then again, our shop name was emblazoned on every sale sign and poster…
