A Membership Meltdown
It’s the middle of the day, and I’ve just finished with a customer when I hear a page for a manager to come to the checkout desk. There were three of us, me and two upper managers. The other two were at the back of the store, so I let them know I’ll go up. When I get there, I see our lead cashier and one of our cashiers by the computer.
The cashier is near tears. [Cashier] is a friend, and I didn’t learn until much later that the customer had called her a f***** b****.
Me: “Hey, hun, what’s going on?”
Cashier: “I can’t deal with this. If that woman says one more word to me, I swear to god—”
Me: “What’s going on?”
The lead cashier replies:
Lead Cashier: “We can’t find her membership, and she’s p***ed.”
Now our membership is entirely electronic. We tell our customers the best way to keep it available is to simply download our app and log in with their account info, which keeps their barcode handy to scan whenever they shop. If they choose not to, we can look up their membership through our computers with their email. [Lead Cashier] has the customer’s name and email written down on a paper slip and says they’ve tried to look it up multiple times.
Me: “Alright, hang here for a sec while I go talk to her.”
[Cashier] and [Lead Cashier] are okay with this plan.
I walk over to the register where the customer is waiting and, in my most obnoxiously pleasant customer service voice, call out:
Me: “Oh, hello! I understand we’re having some difficulty finding your membership. Not to worry, we’ll get it sorted out in a moment. Could you just verify this is the correct email for me?”
The customer stares for a moment before opening her mouth to unleash her hellfire like a California Barbie turned Charizard.
Customer: “Are you f****** kidding me? Are all of you people so f****** stupid?! I’ve been over this a dozen f****** times with them already! You are the only ones who have this issue every f******* time! Why can’t you just—”
Cue static, white noise, more cursing, maybe the insinuation that my mother is a goat, who the h*** knows. I mostly just stopped paying attention as this continued for a solid twenty seconds or so.
I see her pause for breath and take the opportunity to jump in, again with Obnoxiously Pleasant Mode still fully engaged.
Me: “I understand, ma’am, and I’m very sorry. Now, could you verify this email for me, please?”
She stops. She stares. I stare back. Her eye may have developed a twitch.
Through clenched teeth, the customer hisses out her email, confirming that yes, it was written down correctly.
Me: “Thank you so much. Now, I’ll go see what I can find for you.”
I turn to head back to the computer and leave the customer stewing in her funk and muttering angrily. While I’m looking into her account, one of the other managers hurries over, apparently having heard the customer’s shouting from across the store.
Other Manager: “What’s happened?”
I sum it up as simply as I can.
Me: “Lady needs meds.”
[Other Manager] requires a few more details than that, though, so I explain what’s going on and say I’m doing a deep dive into her orders to find her membership and figure out what’s wrong with the account.
Other Manager: “I’m just going to discount her purchases and get her out of here; she’s being way too disruptive.”
[Other Manager] walks over to the customer and opens her mouth to tell her exactly that, but the customer cuts her off with another geyser eruption of hate. [Other Manager] stares at her, wide-eyed, and tries to cut in to let her know that we just really want her gone and will do nearly anything at this point, and we’re just going to comp her a discount, but the customer just does. Not. Stop. [Other Manager] just turns to me and mouths, “Call [Highest Level Manager].”
While poor [Highest Level Manager] and [Other Manager] are trying to deal with the customer, I’m continuing to look into the membership, looking through the orders that are linked with her name until I finally find the payment for the membership.
There’s a TYPO in the email linked to it.
So, with our memberships, they’re basically logged as an order and can be done either at home or in the store with an associate. And depending on the order number, you can tell if it was done through a store’s server, through corporate (calling our customer service number), or at home.
By her order number, it was DEFINITELY done at home.
As I bring up the details on the membership, I hear the customer screech:
Customer: “I want a f****** refund for this useless f****** membership!”
Her ANNUAL membership is set to expire next week.
Eventually, her husband comes back into the store (apparently, he ran the moment she started getting angry) and asks her:
Customer’s Husband: “What the h*** are you doing?! Why do you always act like this?! This wouldn’t keep happening if you’d just downloaded the god-d*** app like they said we should in the beginning!”
For f***’s sake.
