Have a few memorable ones from my retail days.
1) Happy Mouse World. I worked in a shop that sold, among other fancy things, authentic Black Forest cuckoo clocks. Customers would pick the one they wanted from the wall then we'd get them a factory-packed one from stock. We'd open them for inspection if the customer wanted.
A woman came in with four clocks she'd bought the day before (I sold them to her) wanting to do a return. NBD; that kind of thing happens a lot because people realize they've over-spent. Right away, she volunteers that the clock boxes have not been opened. She'd done a half-decent job of re-taping the boxes but I could tell she was lying; the original tape was different.
So I open one of the boxes over her protests. The packing has obviously been disturbed. And the little door where the bird comes out is missing - along with the bird. Lady gets very upset. "Must have been damaged in shipping! I never opened them!" Yeah, right.
After I opened the rest, out of the four, I had none with the little door intact. One still had its cuckoo. There were three doors and one cuckoo rattling around in the boxes.
Had it been shipping damage (which would be highly unlikely; it was clear they were all pulled out by force) the parts would still be in the box. But two clocks had parts missing - without which they NEVER would have left the factory. Also, it would be highly unlikely that four clocks (three different models) would suffer the same kind of physically impossible damage in shipping, AND out of the hundreds of clocks in our stockroom this lady got all four.
I think she figured all this out for herself, because she got increasingly loud and abusive as I went from box to box, to the point where a supervisor was called to stand with me while I finished the inspection. And he shut her down magnificently, because he noticed something I hadn't.
He picked up one of the dismembered cuckoo birds, which was laying next to the box I had just taken it out of, and observed "This bird is white."
He then turned around to the wall of clocks, opened the door of that display model, and said "This bird is blue." Turning back, he lifted up the box and read from the side: "Blue bird cuckoo clock." And then he just looked at the customer.
The lady just visibly deflated. She didn't actually fess up, but it was clear what happened: Her kids had gotten into the boxes back in the hotel room, and broken each clock systematically.
The really sad thing was that the whole charade was unnecessary; at that time, we would take back any merchandise that hadn't actually been set on fire. "My kids broke it" was something we heard a lot.
So she got her money back, but at least my awesome boss and I got to rub her nose in it a bit. That was fun. (And yeah, I might have dated that supervisor a little bit )
1) Happy Mouse World. I worked in a shop that sold, among other fancy things, authentic Black Forest cuckoo clocks. Customers would pick the one they wanted from the wall then we'd get them a factory-packed one from stock. We'd open them for inspection if the customer wanted.
A woman came in with four clocks she'd bought the day before (I sold them to her) wanting to do a return. NBD; that kind of thing happens a lot because people realize they've over-spent. Right away, she volunteers that the clock boxes have not been opened. She'd done a half-decent job of re-taping the boxes but I could tell she was lying; the original tape was different.
So I open one of the boxes over her protests. The packing has obviously been disturbed. And the little door where the bird comes out is missing - along with the bird. Lady gets very upset. "Must have been damaged in shipping! I never opened them!" Yeah, right.
After I opened the rest, out of the four, I had none with the little door intact. One still had its cuckoo. There were three doors and one cuckoo rattling around in the boxes.
Had it been shipping damage (which would be highly unlikely; it was clear they were all pulled out by force) the parts would still be in the box. But two clocks had parts missing - without which they NEVER would have left the factory. Also, it would be highly unlikely that four clocks (three different models) would suffer the same kind of physically impossible damage in shipping, AND out of the hundreds of clocks in our stockroom this lady got all four.
I think she figured all this out for herself, because she got increasingly loud and abusive as I went from box to box, to the point where a supervisor was called to stand with me while I finished the inspection. And he shut her down magnificently, because he noticed something I hadn't.
He picked up one of the dismembered cuckoo birds, which was laying next to the box I had just taken it out of, and observed "This bird is white."
He then turned around to the wall of clocks, opened the door of that display model, and said "This bird is blue." Turning back, he lifted up the box and read from the side: "Blue bird cuckoo clock." And then he just looked at the customer.
The lady just visibly deflated. She didn't actually fess up, but it was clear what happened: Her kids had gotten into the boxes back in the hotel room, and broken each clock systematically.
The really sad thing was that the whole charade was unnecessary; at that time, we would take back any merchandise that hadn't actually been set on fire. "My kids broke it" was something we heard a lot.
So she got her money back, but at least my awesome boss and I got to rub her nose in it a bit. That was fun. (And yeah, I might have dated that supervisor a little bit )
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