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This past Sunday evening was a typical weekend night at the Store - by which I mean the parking lot was full, we had all the registers open and still had long lines, our cart clerks couldn't bring carts into the cart room fast enough to keep up with the new customers streaming in, I had to explain no less than three times that there aren't any dry carts because it's raining outside, and I got to watch one of our LP guys jump on a man's back and apply a chokehold when he tried to run away after getting caught trying to walk out the entrance door with a cart full of meat.
But I digress.
I was covering the front end supervisor's lunch break when there was a call for a lead at the customer service counter. I get up there to find a man and woman in their 30s, with temporary tattoos on their faces and a certain thin and sallow-faced look about them (this'll be important later), who have a shopping cart absolutely full of Christmas candy, and the desk clerk tells me they want to return it. All of it.
The woman tells me that her father has Alzheimer's and he came in late at night earlier that week and spent all their food stamps on this candy and they need to return it so they can buy Christmas dinner. Immediately I'm thinking this must be some kind of scam - they're trying to offload stolen merchandise on us, or they're trying to get cash for food stamps, or swap food stamps from one EBT card to another, or something like that. Sure enough, though, the woman presents a receipt that matches all the stuff in the cart, and an EBT card that matches the card that was used to make the purchase. I ask the store manager over my radio what he thinks about doing a return that large - and he decides that since everything matches up and it's all nonperishable packaged stuff that we can put back on the shelf, he OKs it.
I pull the couple over to one of the few closed registers we have available so I can process the return, which ends up taking about 20 minutes. For every return item, you have to press two buttons on the POS to get to the return menu, then scan the item, then press two more buttons to confirm the return - and there's about 150 items they're returning overall. It comes out to nearly $270 in the end. I set it all up, get another supervisor to do a key-turn to approve it since the store manager doesn't want us doing key-turns on our own transactions, and have them swipe their EBT card so we can do the refund.
It declines. In this state, if you enter the wrong PIN on an EBT transaction three times in a row, the state locks your card for 24 hours or until you call them to verify that you're you and not someone who's stolen your card. This customer had apparently done so, and the system wouldn't let me finalize the refund because of that. They tried to call the customer service line, but it being a Sunday evening there wasn't anyone available to take their call. I had to tell them to take the candy home with them and come back tomorrow to try again.
Later that evening, as the graveyard shift was coming on, I went and talked to the graveyard cashier, whose name had been on the receipt they'd brought in. I asked her if she remembered the transaction and she did, because she found it really unusual that someone would spend that much EBT on Christmas candy. I asked her if she remembered the customer being an older man, and she said no - it had been a man and woman in their 30s, with temporary tattoos on their faces and a certain thin and sallow-faced look about them, who'd been perusing the Christmas candy for hours and who she said were definitely high on marijuana, meth, and/or both.
They did end up coming back on Monday night with the candy, and we were able to do the return that time. (I, of course, had to scan all the items in again since our system can't save transactions overnight.) I was pretty angry that they'd lied to me about why they needed to return the candy and that they'd wasted so much of my time, but at the same time, I found it pretty hilarious. The woman insisted she was going to bring me a Christmas card for saving her Christmas (and how rare is it that an SC accuses you of saving Christmas instead of ruining it, eh?), which I'm kinda-sorta dreading because I'm afraid of what kind of baggie she might stuff into it as an acceptable "tip".
In the end, I spent about an hour or so of the company's time on a series of transactions that resulted in absolutely no net financial gain or loss for the company, saved a Christmas, and generated some work for the go-back clerks who now have to sort through all that candy and put it back on the shelves. (The woman who was working go-backs was literally jaw-dropping silent when I brought the cart to the back room and explained to her what it was.)
Moral of the story: Don't go grocery shopping when you're high.
But I digress.
I was covering the front end supervisor's lunch break when there was a call for a lead at the customer service counter. I get up there to find a man and woman in their 30s, with temporary tattoos on their faces and a certain thin and sallow-faced look about them (this'll be important later), who have a shopping cart absolutely full of Christmas candy, and the desk clerk tells me they want to return it. All of it.
The woman tells me that her father has Alzheimer's and he came in late at night earlier that week and spent all their food stamps on this candy and they need to return it so they can buy Christmas dinner. Immediately I'm thinking this must be some kind of scam - they're trying to offload stolen merchandise on us, or they're trying to get cash for food stamps, or swap food stamps from one EBT card to another, or something like that. Sure enough, though, the woman presents a receipt that matches all the stuff in the cart, and an EBT card that matches the card that was used to make the purchase. I ask the store manager over my radio what he thinks about doing a return that large - and he decides that since everything matches up and it's all nonperishable packaged stuff that we can put back on the shelf, he OKs it.
I pull the couple over to one of the few closed registers we have available so I can process the return, which ends up taking about 20 minutes. For every return item, you have to press two buttons on the POS to get to the return menu, then scan the item, then press two more buttons to confirm the return - and there's about 150 items they're returning overall. It comes out to nearly $270 in the end. I set it all up, get another supervisor to do a key-turn to approve it since the store manager doesn't want us doing key-turns on our own transactions, and have them swipe their EBT card so we can do the refund.
It declines. In this state, if you enter the wrong PIN on an EBT transaction three times in a row, the state locks your card for 24 hours or until you call them to verify that you're you and not someone who's stolen your card. This customer had apparently done so, and the system wouldn't let me finalize the refund because of that. They tried to call the customer service line, but it being a Sunday evening there wasn't anyone available to take their call. I had to tell them to take the candy home with them and come back tomorrow to try again.
Later that evening, as the graveyard shift was coming on, I went and talked to the graveyard cashier, whose name had been on the receipt they'd brought in. I asked her if she remembered the transaction and she did, because she found it really unusual that someone would spend that much EBT on Christmas candy. I asked her if she remembered the customer being an older man, and she said no - it had been a man and woman in their 30s, with temporary tattoos on their faces and a certain thin and sallow-faced look about them, who'd been perusing the Christmas candy for hours and who she said were definitely high on marijuana, meth, and/or both.
They did end up coming back on Monday night with the candy, and we were able to do the return that time. (I, of course, had to scan all the items in again since our system can't save transactions overnight.) I was pretty angry that they'd lied to me about why they needed to return the candy and that they'd wasted so much of my time, but at the same time, I found it pretty hilarious. The woman insisted she was going to bring me a Christmas card for saving her Christmas (and how rare is it that an SC accuses you of saving Christmas instead of ruining it, eh?), which I'm kinda-sorta dreading because I'm afraid of what kind of baggie she might stuff into it as an acceptable "tip".
In the end, I spent about an hour or so of the company's time on a series of transactions that resulted in absolutely no net financial gain or loss for the company, saved a Christmas, and generated some work for the go-back clerks who now have to sort through all that candy and put it back on the shelves. (The woman who was working go-backs was literally jaw-dropping silent when I brought the cart to the back room and explained to her what it was.)
Moral of the story: Don't go grocery shopping when you're high.
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