Labor Day Sales. *long, sorry*

[notalwaysright]

I really feel like the company I work for is trying to kill us. I just counted 12 coupons that are valid right now, in addition to the sale. One is a total purchase coupon. Funny fact, a manager at my work looked at our store's foot traffic and sales numbers because even though we are CRAZY busy, we aren't making goal by very much. We have had about the same number of customers, compared to last year. But our sales numbers aren't where the company wants. You know what it is? It's the total purchase coupons. Contrary to corporate logic, people don't buy more when they have this coupon, because they know full well that there will be another coupon for them to use next time. So why buy more? It's not really a *special* discount if it's offered all the bloody time.


Okay, that was my coupon rant, now to customers.

Hey, if you "don't have enough room" to cut ONE YARD lengths, that's not my problem. Oh, nevermind. It certainly is, because you're making me do several yard cuts out of each bolt. You guys, I have given up trying to tell people that I'm supposed to cut yardage, not pieces. The company I work for will roll over and spread 'em for the customer, I refuse to get yelled at, then be forced to do what the customer wants anyway. So if you're in line and see a cutter making multiple cuts, taking two or three times longer than it should... It's not our fault. Complain to corporate, not that they'll care, but just know that I have no choice in this.

Still the same woman who wanted me to do multiple yard cuts. Her toddler was pretty whiny. I don't blame him, she shopped for nearly three hours. I couldn't stand to hear her talk to him, though.

Her: What's wrong?
Him: *unintelligible whining*
Her: Are you done? You're done.

She repeated this same exact dialog for hours, actual HOURS. After a while I remembered that I'd cut for her previously, and she also has a daughter. I remember the daughter clearly, because she threw a fit after her mom told her she couldn't get whatever treat she had been promised. It's hard to describe, but the woman is that annoying combination of loud, oblivious, and fake. After I was off, I was walking through the parking lot, and she couldn't get her toddler son into his car seat. It sounded like he had escaped, and was half under the seat of the mini van. She was standing outside the back door yelling at him to come out.


I had a lady say that she was going to make me "earn my wages." She made me cut two one yard pieces out of her entire cart. Later she was talking to her tiny dog and said "what's wrong, do you want the girl to go faster?" She said all of this in a perfectly cheerful tone. I couldn't tell if she was being snippy, or was truly so stupid and out of touch that she didn't realize how horrible she was acting. Even my CW commented on it after she had left. I was pretty proud of myself, for being professional and not acting as pissed as I felt. (or I don't think I did at least)


Last one is possible my suck? I was waiting at the office to turn in equipment, and a lady had a bunch of bolts on the floor. Out of habit I offered to go get her a cart. She said, "oh, that's okay I can get it." I said it's no problem, and went off. Now that I think about it, maybe she thought I was a random customer? I had my coat on, but was holding a radio and handheld scanner in my hands and was repeatedly calling for someone to let me in the office. But if she thought I was a customer, I guess that's why she gave me a look, like I was being pushy and snarky. Also, there weren't any carts up front, so I went to find one (and got a manager to let me in the office) and when I got back she was gone. So, yeah. I don't know, if you had a bunch of stuff on the floor and some random person offered to get you a cart, would that be rude? Anyway, that might have been my bad.

[chimera]

Has this company always tried to accomplish everything with coupons? I had an older lady ask me if coupon with yesterday's date would work...noooo...unfortunately it is the day after that. I tell her that that is the old mailer. Do you have any coupons back there? Nope, sorry. She somehow gets ahold of the current mailer and asks me coupon questions while I'm already cutting for the next customer. It's so awkward when customers do that. The customer I'm cutting for is probably hoping I cut the right amount despite the distraction and wishing they could just get their stuff and check out in a timely manner.

Back to coupons and sales. It's like a catch 22, isn't it? The company pumps out coupons to bring people in, then gets mad when stores still don't reach insane goals. Suddenly it's our fault for not meeting goal because we didn't push enough extra crap on the customers. People spend all they're going to spend during the huge sales, then sales stagnate when prices go back up. There's almost a stock index for flannel and tacky fleece! FLNL ^5pts to 5.50 a share...FLEE \/ 2pts to 12 a share...CRAFTDAQ closes at 9242pts, labor cuts sure to follow...

[Food Lady]

CRAFTDAQ closes at 9242pts, labor cuts sure to follow...

CRAFTDAQ is my new favorite term!

[Mr Hero]

Shopping for 3 hours? I wouldn't have the patience for that as an adult, even if I had something to keep me busy. I feel bad for the poor kid. I know it sucks to have to go shopping with parents at any store, especially one that doesn't cater to kids.

[RealUnimportant]

One store near me has been publishing "£5 off £40 total purchase" coupons in the free paper every holiday weekend this year. Thing is, it's one of those uber-discount stores where you can only hit £40 if you buy a couple of cart's worth of crap, which you then have to find space for at home. I had a debate with myself just a few hours ago about whether I should go out & spend the latest one (expires tonight) or just kick back & enjoy my Sunday off... I opted for the latter, not least because weekday shopping in there is much less hectic than Sundays!

I don't think there was any suck involved in the last one; I've made similar offers as a fellow customer, and sometimes people take you up on it but usually they don't. I think they don't want to appear inadequately prepared?

[dalesys]

CRAFTDAQ is my new favorite term!

Isn't it CRAFTDAFQ?

[Minflick]

Snicker...

[MoonCat]

Re: Coupons, I THINK I can guess what corporate wants. See, if they offer a good coupon, that will be bring MORE customers than you normally get into the store, right? Right?? Then you'll make the impossible sales goals because more people = more sales! Right??

Actually, probably not.

[eltf177]

Mooncat has it right. Coupons might bring in more people, but the coupon means sales are flat. Now, if they come back and shop without the coupon this might work but with a coupon being issued every week they'll use it so nothing changes. Thus sales remain flat and corporate 'in its infinite wisdom' blames the staff as naturally it can't be THEIR fault!

Until corporate gets a clue the staff is going to take the fall for this, even though it's NOT their fault!

[Sparklyturtle]

I stayed home from local version of notalwaysright's store this Labor Day because (gasp!) I don't need anything and I'm trying to use up what I've already got, which may or may not happen in this lifetime.

[workerbee222]

I figure, if virtually everything is on sale virtually all the time, the company knows their prices are too high. Ditto the "get a stamp for every $x you spend and get a $15 dish for buying $500 worth of groceries." I know as a customer what they want to have happen, I'm just not buying it, so to speak.

Boss dislikes putting things on sale. It means he picked wrong, or overbought.

[notalwaysright]

Mooncat has it right. Coupons might bring in more people, but the coupon means sales are flat. Now, if they come back and shop without the coupon this might work but with a coupon being issued every week they'll use it so nothing changes.

Yes. This company has been issuing coupons pretty much forever. Sit back, folks... I remember right when I started working there the first time, there was one coupon. It was 40% off. A customer could use two, total. One from their direct mailer, one from the ad in the newspaper. They could use it on nearly anything, including clearance, and including sales items. (it took the discount from the regular price) Then we got notice that coupons could not override sales, and couldn't be used on clearance. We had to warn customers that this was going to go into effect. It was terrible.

Now the coupons have multiplied, and they are generally more restrictive. Everyone knows that they can ALWAYS get a coupon. We never used to have total purchase coupons, and when they first started running them, we did see a boost in sales. Now they are common place. Again, everyone knows they don't need to make a special trip to use this weeks coupon, since there will be another (possibly better!) coupon next week. I think it's insane that such a simple concept is too hard for corporate to understand.

I also think it's hard to understand why customers don't understand the idea of artificially inflating the price in order to "lower" it with a sale or coupon. Was I the only person who took marketing classes in high school? They see some seasonal crap and go "oh, it was $50 and now it's $25, that's such a good deal!" NO. IT'S NOT.

[Racket_Man]

Re: Coupons, I THINK I can guess what corporate wants. See, if they offer a good coupon, that will be bring MORE customers than you normally get into the store, right? Right?? Then you'll make the impossible sales goals because more people = more sales! Right??

Actually, probably not.

This was the problem that my pizza place franchise had years ago. every 2 months or so they would include a sheet of coupons in the weekly Voldy-Mart circular. We could always tell when the sheet dropped as in our business would skyrocket for maybe a week then drop off back to normal.

Now pizza place corp. learned a "lesson" from that about 7 years ago as in "Let's run continuous (as in 6 months or a year perhaps) stupidly insane low low price or discounted stuff. That is the answer." Yeah right SO DID EVERYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET YOU IDIOTS!!!!

NO all that did was lower the "customers" expectations of prices and meaning that the customer would NEVER expect to pay full price for a pizza/sides/deserts/soda every again. SO now I have people still bitchin and complaining that their order is WWWWAAAAYYYYYY to expensive (at normal price) and corp. just keeps on with the stupid insane LOW LOW price/discount stuff continuously.

Under One of the current deals I have seen discounts for $25 - $30 off of 2 medium "loaded" pizzas. HOW in all that is sane does one make money off a deal like that? My franchise apparently does not as they keep crying poor.

The way I look at it my pizza place is really no better than Little Caeser's $5 hot and ready sales model that has been in place for like 10+ years now.

[emax4]

I had a lady say that she was going to make me "earn my wages." She made me cut two one yard pieces out of her entire cart. Later she was talking to her tiny dog and said "what's wrong, do you want the girl to go faster?" She said all of this in a perfectly cheerful tone.

That's when you look at the dog, and in a cutesy voice you say, "Now I can finally slow down from the rush. I'll take as much time as I need, even the reset of my work day to do this!"

[EricKei]

Re: Coupons, I THINK I can guess what corporate wants. See, if they offer a good coupon, that will be bring MORE customers than you normally get into the store, right? Right?? Then you'll make the impossible sales goals because more people = more sales! Right??

That's exactly what they believe, in my experience.

It's like a catch 22, isn't it? The company pumps out coupons to bring people in, then gets mad when stores still don't reach insane goals.

Yup. If they give out a 30% coupon, they assume that the average spend for each customer will increase by 50%...Uhm, no. For one in five, maybe. For the rest? Their net spend will DROP by 30%.

This was the problem that my pizza place franchise had years ago...

NO all that did was lower the "customers" expectations of prices and meaning that the customer would NEVER expect to pay full price for a pizza/sides/deserts/soda every again.

Same thing back when I slung pizzas. We always had SOME sale/coupon/etc going on. If we didn't, we were authorized to look up an active discount code in the system, or just ask a manager to give a blanket % off when it was all rung up. This was in addition to the standard "Order any large, get the next 2 larges for eight bucks" (pay full price for the most expensive one -- at the time, our cost for a large pepperoni was $6). It didn't help that Corporate pretty much automatically gave away free cards at the slightest whiff of a complaint.