They Shopped Long Enough To Become The Villain

My store doesn’t have a designated clearance section but rather has clearance items everywhere which are identified by the Sharpie slashes through the barcodes. A green slash means something is 25% off, a red slash means 50% off (or, very occasionally, more).

There are signs all over the store to explain this, but of course, people don’t read them closely, so we at the registers then have to explain that no, a customer did not find their item “in the clearance aisle” and no, it’s not on sale. Sometimes people shrug it off, and sometimes they yell at us about “misleading signs.” But then there is this memorable couple

The husband puts two pieces of wall art on my counter.

Husband: “We found these in the clearance aisle. Can you tell us how much they’ve been marked down?”

Me: *Bracing myself* “We don’t actually have a clearance aisle. These are regular price; there are clearance items all over the store, but they’re marked as such.”

Wife: “Wait, is that what the sign said?”

Me: “Yes. You can see one of the signs right there; a red slash is half-price. These pieces aren’t marked, so they’re regular price.”

They turn and look at the sign and then stare at each other with horrified expressions.

Wife: “We didn’t read the sign. My God, we’ve become what we hate!”