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I was running the front end again tonight, standing at my podium with my clipboard and radio staring into space and waiting for something to happen. Our evening rush was on (which thankfully is starting to get less insane now that school's back and the sun is going down at a reasonable hour), and the line for the self-checkout is snaked around my podium. As a young woman walks by me, I notice that most dastardly of chimerae in her hand - a six-pack of Mike's Hard Lemonade where someone (probably the person holding it) has taken bottles of different flavors out of different packs to create a mix-and-match set.
We do not sell the six-packs this way, because it screws up our inventory and leaves us with loose bottles that we can't match back to their cases and can't legally sell individually. (We're in a "high impact area" where the city doesn't allow us to sell certain kinds of alcohol that're associated with public drunkenness and littering, and loose bottles of Mike's are included right along with your Steel Reserves and Thunderbirds and M/D and so forth.)
I politely tell the woman that we can't sell a case that's mixed up like that. She says it was like that on the shelf. She probably doesn't want to admit to mixing it up herself, but it's entirely possible another customer mixed it up while trying to create their own custom mix. I tell her people sometimes try to mix them up but that we're not allowed to sell them that way, and she says "Oh, I don't want it then." (Guilty!)
When I had a chance, I went around the corner to the beer aisle and, sure enough, the Mike's section was a mess. There were more jumbled up cases and loose bottles lying around than there were intact cases, and even one with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice wedged into it. I gathered up all the junk I could find and spent a good 10 minutes at the podium trying to put them back together again, and still wound up with four six-packs worth of unmatchable bottles that we have to send back to the vendor.
I don't get why people think this is acceptable. You wouldn't pick up a case of Twinkies, tear it open, take two out and swap them for two from a box of Ding-Dongs. Just because a six-pack is "open" and the bottles are easily removable doesn't mean it's customizable. And this is really only a problem with the Mike's - I've never seen anyone doing this with the craft beers, or the hard soda, or the Seagram's coolers. We have our cashiers trained to stop it if someone tries to bring a mixed six-pack through their line, but obviously people are getting away with it, as the self-checkout clerk probably wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been in the area.
Just another one of those things that makes my head hurt and make me want to cell customers "This is why prices are going up."
We do not sell the six-packs this way, because it screws up our inventory and leaves us with loose bottles that we can't match back to their cases and can't legally sell individually. (We're in a "high impact area" where the city doesn't allow us to sell certain kinds of alcohol that're associated with public drunkenness and littering, and loose bottles of Mike's are included right along with your Steel Reserves and Thunderbirds and M/D and so forth.)
I politely tell the woman that we can't sell a case that's mixed up like that. She says it was like that on the shelf. She probably doesn't want to admit to mixing it up herself, but it's entirely possible another customer mixed it up while trying to create their own custom mix. I tell her people sometimes try to mix them up but that we're not allowed to sell them that way, and she says "Oh, I don't want it then." (Guilty!)
When I had a chance, I went around the corner to the beer aisle and, sure enough, the Mike's section was a mess. There were more jumbled up cases and loose bottles lying around than there were intact cases, and even one with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice wedged into it. I gathered up all the junk I could find and spent a good 10 minutes at the podium trying to put them back together again, and still wound up with four six-packs worth of unmatchable bottles that we have to send back to the vendor.
I don't get why people think this is acceptable. You wouldn't pick up a case of Twinkies, tear it open, take two out and swap them for two from a box of Ding-Dongs. Just because a six-pack is "open" and the bottles are easily removable doesn't mean it's customizable. And this is really only a problem with the Mike's - I've never seen anyone doing this with the craft beers, or the hard soda, or the Seagram's coolers. We have our cashiers trained to stop it if someone tries to bring a mixed six-pack through their line, but obviously people are getting away with it, as the self-checkout clerk probably wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been in the area.
Just another one of those things that makes my head hurt and make me want to cell customers "This is why prices are going up."
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