Work, work, work

My father in law works for the SF Giants as the Vice President of Guest Services ( at least I think that's his title), and part of his job requires him to read the MANY e-mails that get sent to the ballpark, most of which are usually complaints. He's said before that when he retires his going to write a book in which he'll list the dumbest, weirdest, randomest things that people have actually written to him and I've heard some of them, and it's amazing what kind of people are out there! I was thinking about this as I worked today because really, some people have no nerve! I think that perhaps I too should write a book some day about the crazy and wild thins people try to do at Old Navy, and believe me, I have PLENTY of those to share. And let me start off by talking about what happened TODAY...

Sometime around 4ish I think, our LOD gets a phone call from Vacaville who's warning us that 4 ladies are going around to all the Old Navy's trying to return stolen goods. They tell us what they look like and the LP agent even tells us that we should not accept their return and just give them a Merchandise certificate. (Our return policy recently changed and now allows you to exchange up to 5 items).

So these ladies eventually make it into our store and we already know them because they return things like no other! And here's what they do...

they walk in grab a cart and put a BIG shopping bag in it, then they go around pretending to shop and pile a bunch of stuff on top of the bag. When they get to the registers they take everything out at once (the stuff their buying and the stuff they're "returning") and mix it all together so that in the end they end up getting money for stuff they JUST put into their cart that very day.

So when they walked in, the LOD asked me to keep an eye on them. Being the great customer service associate I am I aske them if they needed any help, and started a friendly convo with them. Then they moved and I was told to follow them which I did, kinda discreetly (I pretended to out other things away and talked with other customers and what not) but they were on to me. One of them even yelled something about how she hated being followed. Excuse me but you only hate being followed because it keeps you from stealing! After some more of her yelling I really felt that she was going to beat me up or something so I stopped following her while still keeping my eye on her. When she got to the register, we were ready for her. The LOD told her that our system was down and so all she could get was a merchandise certificate because a screen popped up that said she had already exchanged her 5 items. The lady looks at the LOD and says what? what do you mean? here are my 5 items, to which the LOD wishes she could've said yeah right, vacaville just called and you were JUST there! She can't of course so she tells her that all she can get is the merch. cert. Finally the lady agrees and gets the cert for 200 dollars and leaves. And the worst part is that it's all prob stolengoods and now she gets to come back and shop with that certificate. I don't understand people and how they can do this and be so dishonest. I mean really, can't you just get a job and pay for the stuff like any other law abiding citizen? And on top of that get mad at people for doing their job and trying to keep you from stealing? I mean why was she so angry about us following her? Obviously because she was feeling oh so guilty!

I must say though that I was relieved when she finally left the store, I really thouht she was going to kill me or something and I don't do well in those kinds of situations....