[The following account is true. Names and descriptive characteristics have been omitted to protect "The Innocent". (Yeah, right!)]
Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away…
For those who don’t follow me on Facebook, I work for one of our country’s major retailers. Retail, especially for a general merchandiser, is an interesting business; there is constant pressure because people are always buying things. You have to make sure there is always something for them to buy. [That might seem an odd statement, but -- like most things in life -- things aren't as simple as they seem.]
Now, in dealing with the “general public”, it’s difficult to strike a balance. There are all kinds of customers. For example, my latest pet peeve is about one group who wants to open packages before they make a purchase. These people don’t realize that if they decide not to make the purchase, then I have to deal with a second group of people who want a discount because they don’t want to purchase an open package. Believe me. I empathize with each group; however, there is considerable overlap between the two.
However, that is not what this essay is about.
All retailers have return policies. They have these policies in the interest of being fair to their customers and because, frankly, they can’t just take any return and get fair value for it. Suppliers have their policies also and no profit-making organization can afford to eat substantial amounts of inventory in order to generate goodwill with their customers and still survive. The point here is that a retailer has to strike a balance when it comes to taking returns.
I have a reputation in my facility of being somewhat stubbornly of a strict constructionist when it comes to “The Return Policy”. If a customer has 90 days to return something, I’m not the person to speak to on the 91st day. Nor am I the one to speak to if you don’t have a receipt. The Return Policy is clearly posted and I expect it to be followed. Such is the pitfall of being a computer programmer/analyst in a previous life.
However, also being human and, in this instance, repeating myself, I understand the need for balance.
Which leads me to today’s little story…
A customer enters the store to make a return. He has, he says, made a purchase of a video-game system but an incorrect one. He wants to exchange one system for another of a different manufacturer. He does not, however, have a receipt.
Let me digress by saying that working in retail, you quickly understand the futility of profiling. It doesn’t work. Hucksters comes in all shapes and sizes, of all ethnicities and backgrounds. So, my tendency is to follow procedure. Procedure is there to help you avoid making bad choices. Again, it’s the programmer thing. A leads to B leads to C, choice D or E.
In recent weeks, various managers have spoken to me about being more flexible in interpreting The Return Policy. However, I tend to be Antonin Scalia when it comes to that. I’m not here to legislate, but to enforce.
Anyway, our customer with no receipt is waiting at the service desk and one of my superiors has requested my presence there despite my predilection for being “Dr. No” when it comes to The Return Policy. (Hey, Barack Obama has nothing on me! )
Now, the 18th of August turned out to be a very strange day. It was a day of role-reversal. I was cast as the kindly associate who wanted to help out the customer and the aforementioned superior was the one who wanted to help the customer out as well … out of the store.
When I arrived at the service desk, I was met by a customer whom America would profile as a fine, upstanding citizen. He explained that he had purchased the game system by mistake and that his wife accused him of purchasing the wrong one on purpose. According to Mr. Citizen, he hadn’t opened the game system and would merely like to exchange it. Gamers would recognize Mr. Citizen’s purchase as one which typically has a problem known as “The Red Ring of Death”. ‘Nuff said.
I opened the package and it did indeed looked previously unopened. Wondering where The Supervisor was, I told Mr. Citizen that I would be back and wandered over to the manager’s office. I found The Supervisor furiously looking through our point-of-sale system looking for evidence of the purchase. I had found evidence of a purchase last Friday, the day in question, but not necessarily the purchase. I informed The Supervisor — one of the ones who have been encouraging me to be more flexible — that I wanted to make the exchange.
The word incredulity comes to mind.
Well, to make an already long story shorter, The Supervisor and several others finally found evidence of a Friday purchase. We printed out the evidence and returned to Mr. Citizen with our discovery.
Mr. Citizen, first-name: Fine Upstanding, had informed me that he had made the purchase last Friday, in cash, at approximately 11am. However, our documentation showed that The Purchase was made at 9:30pm Friday evening on a debit card and that the serial number of the system purchased did not match the serial number of the system returned. Rather, THAT system had been purchased last February 16th, considerably beyond the 15 days stated in The Return Policy. We would not be making the exchange.
Mr. Citizen quietly left the store.
The moral of the story here?
Profiling BAD::Policy GOOD.
(Any relationship to my political views is purely coincidental. Yeah, right!)
[This would be my obligatory reference to The Global War On Terror.]
Oh, and if I had made the decision I’d normally make (NO RECEIPT=NO RETURN), we would have saved about 30 minutes of everyone’s time.
I guess my whine here is that my supervisors jumped through hoops to prove me wrong in my judgment yet don’t follow through in similar situations when I question theirs. I wouldn’t have made the judgment I made if all my prior judgments had been followed without being critiqued. Are you following this?
Anyway, I have to go.
My supervisor just called.
It seems like someone bought an iPod, but there was no iPod inside.
(You should know the packaging is clear plastic.)
And so it goes.
Ciao for now!
Mike
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