Let’s face it. The customer is only right 98% of the time. The other 2% of the time, they’re…well…nuts. Like the one who put a whole new spin on “exchange request” when I still operated a stationery store.
The following is a true story, I swear:
A woman walks in the door with a pizza box. Extra large, oil stained, smelling slightly rancid. She comes up to the counter, then tells me her daughter received a gift from the store for her birthday, but she’s not really nuts about the items. Wants to exchange them for something else.
I am, naturally, a bit distracted by this crazy pizza box. It’s obviously old. We don’t sell pizza. Why does she have this thing?
Then I find out.
She opens said stained, rancid pizza box to expose loose sheets of handmade import stationery sheets, matching envelopes, a handblown glass pen, and a bottle of import ink that we sold. Past tense. As in a year or more before then. And, of course, the paper and envelopes have absorbed the rancid grease and stench.
“When was your daughter’s birthday?” I ask, trying desperately to keep my eyeballs from bugging right out of my head.
“Last year.”
“Have these been in a pizza box all this time?” I continue, incredulous.
“Yes. She didn’t want to misplace them.”
I just stood there and looked at her, dumbfounded. Didn’t have to say a word. She turned beet red, closed the box, and said, “I was pretty sure you’d say no, but still wanted to ask.”
Seriously? Seriously???
Oh yeah. And this was a woman who came in the store monthly to pick up greeting cards. Not like it was inconvenient to request an exchange a year earlier, sans pizza box.
Since a chuckle or twelve over the weekend is always in order, here’s a question for all you business owners out there:
What’s the craziest return one of your customers has attempted to make?
Let ‘er rip. Heaven knows, there’s plenty o’ material out there to work with….
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