Cheap Customers

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unicorn-skydancer08's avatar
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One of the downsides of working in a thrift store is that people are a lot more doubtful about the quality of the merchandise. They want to make absolutely sure this thing or that thing will be worth every cent of their money before they cough the money up. Granted, I can see where they're coming from with this, and we do make honest efforts to put out stuff that's still in good shape. It would be bad for business if we sold nothing but junk.

But from my experiences, some customers go a little too far to see the quality for themselves; they'll rip open the bags right in front of us and dump all the contents onto the counter, and then we have the tedious chore of re-bagging the loot and adding a little extra tape to the seal and then another customer will insist on opening that same bag all over again. Some customers will spend as long as a half-hour examining every inch of a single plate or purse or figurine, and it's all I can do not to tell them, "Come on, we haven't got all day!"

Besides this, people raise a lot more arguments about the prices. Some wonder why we even charge them at all, since we got the goods for free and now we're charging them money to take the goods home. Well, where else are we going to get the money to keep up the facility and pay our workers? Furthermore, our prices aren't that outrageous, though many would be the first to disagree.

I can appreciate the desire to save money. But some people come off as total cheapskates. They will demand on changing a price, even if they'll only be saving two or three bucks in the process. Just the other day, for example, a bowl had two different price stickers on it by mistake. One sticker said $10, the other said $3. When a lady noticed this, she was positively adamant about me selling it to her for the three dollars, even though the ten was the correct price. Man, you would have thought I was trying to rob her blind. She wouldn't let the matter rest and I had to bring a CSL into this. In the end, she got her way and got away with paying only the three.

Don't think I wasn't tempted to give that lady a sound piece of my mind. The workers in the back of the store are responsible for the prices, and I'm the one that gets bawled out for them.

I remember how another guy recently gave me an earful about the prices. He lobbed plenty of cuss words into my face and even had the gall to say that God didn't love me because of what I was doing. He really treated me like a criminal, all the while failing to realize that I have nothing to do with deciding how much to charge for an item. I'm often as puzzled about the prices as anyone else, and yet I can only go along with what the tag says and do my job.

And then just yesterday, another lady wanted us to alter the price of this really nice glass jar that held fake fruit. It only cost $10. Don't know how much she would have paid for it, but she put plenty of pressure on us to try to mark it down.

Eventually she went away, implying that she would be back later.

In her absence, a guy approached me and he was perfectly happy to buy that same jar for full price. He didn't think ten dollars was outrageous at all. So what could I do? No one else had gotten a ticket for that jar, not even that other lady. And he was there, both able and willing to pay.

He claimed the goods within the next 15 minutes or so. Not long after he had gone, that same lady came back with her heart still set on that jar. I told her politely that someone else had bought it first and that I was very sorry. She said nothing, but gave me this weird look, almost like, "Seriously? You knew I wanted it and yet you went ahead and sold it to somebody else."

Sorry, ma'am, but we can't make special favors like that. There comes a time when you either buy the thing as it is, or you don't buy it at all.

There comes a time (and I'm grateful) when a customer finds an item and tells us, "I don't care how much you're asking for this; I've got to have it! Here's my money!"

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Winzer's avatar
Retail is by far the craziest job to work.