2. “Years ago, I worked at a small hardware store where they constantly got huge rolls of copper wire stolen. One day, this guy and his girlfriend come in to return a roll. I was a few months in on the returns counter. They had no receipt, and when I scanned the item for the return, it only did the price per foot. I couldn’t figure out how to get the SKU or the price for the whole roll. I called the manager, and he came out. Right away, I knew there was no way these people could buy a roll and return it.”
“So he asks when they bought it, and they say two weeks ago ( the common response), and my manager tells them, ‘Oh really, because the last time we sold an entire roll was over three months ago.’ The guy starts to get brave and tells him, ‘So you’re saying I stole it?!’ And my manager says yes. They end up leaving and leaving the roll behind. Before they leave the store, the guy says, ‘I’m coming back and bringing the cops.’ The manager says, ‘Go ahead. That way, you can explain to them how you stole the roll.'”
9. “I work at a major cell phone retailer. I once had a man come in with his wife to upgrade whatever the new iPhone was. While they were sitting in the store working with one of my reps (I was in management at the time), the wife started getting text messages from someone claiming to be her husband’s mistress. This did not go over well. They took it outside before it got overly nasty, and we all assumed they were gone for good. Not so, the husband comes back in. Alone. He finished upgrading his phone (priorities) and left. The next day, he tried to return the phone, claiming we had sold him one with screen damage. He brings it in, and it looks like someone took a diamond ring or something to the screen and scratched the heck out of it.”
“Now we have a strict ‘open the box and hand it to the customer before they leave’ policy to avoid these situations. I was able to pull tape, show the customer where he held the phone for a good five minutes without pointing out any flaws, and tell him that my company offers no warranty on that brand even if it’s bad out of the box, and especially when he didn’t show it to us before leaving the store. I suggested he take it up with the manufacturer if he truly believed the phone was damaged out of the box.
He did, right there in the store he called them. They also told him to kick rocks. The best part? I was new to management, so I didn’t have a manager’s name tag yet. He asked to speak to the manager, and I got to give him my best evil grin and say, ‘I am the manager.’ He left after that, and we never saw him again.”