Taking Out The Trashy Customers

(We have a policy on our non-perishable items that if they’ve been marked down a few times, the next time we charge only a penny for them, just to get rid of them. One of our regular customers has the annoying habit of knowing the markdown schedule and taking items she suspects are going to be a penny and hiding them throughout the store in odd places, so she can come back and retrieve them to pay only one cent. I’ve found many of these and returned them to the shelves, where they were promptly purchased by others. She’s previously yelled at me when her stashed items were gone. The next time the penny-pinching regular shows up:)

Customer: “What happened to the green vase?”

Me: “Which one is that?”

Customer: “The one that was so marked down. I wanted it.”

Me: *knowing I’d found it in her hidey hole and it had been sold* “Oh, that one. We threw it in the dumpster. It had been marked down and no one seemed to want it.”

Customer: “What? You just threw it in the dumpster?”

Me: “Yeah, but I don’t think they’d care if you wanted to peek in there and see if it’s on top.”

Customer: “Okay, then!”

Coworker: “What was that all about?”

Me: “I just sent her to dig to the bottom of the stinkiest garbage ever, for something that doesn’t exist.”

Coworker: “Good.”