Here's your soil, the bag is extra

[Dark Psion]

I got this one from the True Value message boards. Someone had asked about how other stores deal with broken bags of soil, fertilizer and other bagged goods.

One store had this response;

We no longer sell "broken bags". We used to till this happened one morning. One of our managers was cleaning up the soil area and wearing street clothes because it is a dirty job. A very expensive Mercedes pulls up next to this area and a very well dressed man gets out and starts looking over the soils. Before the manager could ask him if he needed any help, the man stars kicking the bags!
When he sees what he thinks is another customer, he says "They discount broken bags and this way I never pay full price." and goes into the store.

They call out to load 8 broken 50lb bags of soil and the man opens his trunk and walks off to look at something, the manager (now in his store clothes) loads up his soil, but only the soil as he dumps out all 8 bags in the trunk.

When the man comes back he says "Next time, pay full price and we will include the bags for free."

[ReverendBSB]

Nice. That man is my new hero. What did the rich asshole say? If he tried to cause any problems you could call the police on him for damaging merchandise.

[aurelemsrealm]

APPLAUSE!!!! APPLAUSE!!!!! APPLAUSE!!!!!

I like to see jackasses like that put in their place, and absolutely love it when I can be the one to deliver the knockdown blow to their egos.

[Great Unknown]

Sounds like Mr. Seed Feed got himself a nice car?

[BookstoreEscapee]

8 bags!? Doesn't that make the employees suspicious? There just happen to be 8 broken bags out there that no one noticed? I can see one or 2 but 8??!!

I wanna meet that manager and shake his hand

[Becks]

Would it be cynical of me to ask if this story is true?

Like BE said, one or two is believable, but 8?

[protege]

Hechinger's had a similar policy. Any broken bags weren't sold. What we'd do, is repackage them in clear bags, and mark them down about 10%. If the bag was broken open, but not clear, or marked down, no discount. It didn't stop people from trying to damage things, but it sure stopped them from getting a discount.

I do recall though, watching a co-worker break a bag of concrete in our ASM's brand new Jeep one afternoon. I don't know if it was an accident, or just a coincidence, since the ASM was being a real bastard that day.

[Retail Associate]

When I worked in the Garden Center years ago they used to discount torn bags of soil. One woman used to come in fairly often, tear open the bags, then ask for the discount. They caught onto her soon enough and we were told to keep an eye out for her.

Sure enough, one morning she came into the Garden Center and I recognized her right away. I watched her as she ever so cleverly stuck her nails into several bags of soil. She then loaded them on a cart and brought them to the register where she asked for the discount. I refused to give her the discount and told her that I was watching as she deliberately broke open those bags. She was pissed but she never tried it again during my shift.

Quoth protege

I do recall though, watching a co-worker break a bag of concrete in our ASM's brand new Jeep one afternoon. I don't know if it was an accident, or just a coincidence, since the ASM was being a real bastard that day.

Accidentally on purpose!

[Lace Neil Singer]

At the garden centre where I worked, any broken bags of compost were used on the plants. We never used to discount compost bags, or indeed any pet food bags; any torn pet food bags were just dumped in the loose food. This policy was put into place apparently (happened before I worked there) when a woman was caught red handed tearing open bags of cat litter to get a discount. After that, the policy of using up torn bags or if not possible, selling to staff at a discount was taken up and it worked really well tho we did get the odd idiot trying it on. Once had a woman say to me that a bag of rabbit food was torn so could she have it half price? Her face was a picture when I told her that if it was torn, I'd just put it in the food bin. When I inspected it, it was obviously done by nails; said woman was wearing bright red nail polish and there were red flakes on the bag.

[Spiffy McMoron]

Quoth Lace Neil Singer

When I inspected it, it was obviously done by nails; said woman was wearing bright red nail polish and there were red flakes on the bag.

And that's why you hired Gil Grissom for store security!

Seriously though, I'd like to ask all of these people: Are you buying the product or the bag it came in?