The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 19

I’m at work and two older couples come in and sit in my section. I approach and everything is normal.

Customer: “I have a gift card. Do you need that now or what?”

Me: “No, that’s all right. I can take it later when I bring the bill. No worries.”

Everything proceeds as usual; the food is correct and comes out in a timely manner. No complaints to be had. Everyone is in a good mood.

The time comes to drop off the bill and he hands me the gift card. It’s addressed to him and is unopened. I go to run it, and while it is clearly from our company and says on the inside packaging that there should be $100 on it, it keeps getting declined with an error message telling me there are no funds to be used. I run the card three times and I type in the card number, but no luck. I head back to the table.

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve tried everything I can, and I keep getting the message there aren’t any funds on the card.”

Customer: “Then you people stole money from my granddaughter. She bought it at another store as a gift, and then she sent it to me.”

My initial thought is that perhaps whoever purchased the card for him had an issue with their bank or payment originally and they were never charged so the card was never truly activated. Or perhaps the card was purchased at a corporate location and for some strange reason won’t work at the franchise location where I work.

Me: “Well, I’m sorry about that. I can grab the manager and see if there’s anything he can do that I wasn’t able to figure out.”

I go tell the manager the same thing; he tries the same things but to no avail. He tells me he’ll go talk to them. A couple of minutes later, I see him at the customers’ table, and when he walks away, I ask what they said.

Manager: “Oh, they said, ‘F*** you, f*** you, f*** you.'”

Me: “What?!”

Manager: “Yeah, the guy was super pissed and yelled at me because we wouldn’t honor the card, but I told him we would be losing that money by comping everything. We would need to keep the card so he couldn’t pull the same stunt again, but I didn’t tell him that part. And since the card was worth more than the total bill, what was I going to do, give him the last $30 back in cash or on a different gift card?”

Me: “Yeah, that makes sense. So, I guess I still need to go over there and give them the bill. Not looking forward to this.”

Manager: “No, I already got their actual card, ran it, and gave it back to them, so they should be all set now.”

I was so relieved, and they got up a minute later to leave and I was glad to be busy enough not to have to go back over there and talk to them again. Sir, I hope you do call corporate and get that figured out, because I wouldn’t want that to happen to someone else. I also don’t ever want to be on the employee end of that again, getting yelled at for something way out of my hands.

Related:
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 18
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 17
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 16
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 15
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 14