Maddening

In my profession, politeness is a must. Smiling is a constant, care and understanding the expectation. In my profession, the "extra mile" isn't extra. In my profession, the customer is always right. But...what if they're not???

I wasn't supposed to be working the registers today - but Chris Wallace needed a lunch break, so I agreed to cover for him. The man whom I will call Ali (his real name is much longer and I can't even pronounce it, much less remember it - but 'Ali' is in there somewhere) walked into the store and inwardly I groaned. "Not again," I thought. I tried to keep a grimace off my face.

"What are we returning today?" I asked, with as much politeness as I could muster. This man returns *everything*. He has bought thousands of dollars worth of stuff and returned almost all of it. After he's done using it, of course. Ali is meticulous about keeping all of his receipts, but everything he brings back is very used or broken in some way. He complains about the quality of the products and, since he has his receipts, gets back the full amount he paid for it. That's the thing - REI has an exceptional return policy that unfortunately leaves us vulnerable to people such as Ali. And there's nothing I can do about it.

"Is there anything our sales staff can do better for you? It would seem that nothing we recommend works out for you." He mumbled something in reply about how he's just looking for quality products, and that his stepmother buys everything from Germany and it lasts for 12+ years. I really wanted to tell him that from now on he, too, should buy everything from Germany and never come back to REI - obviously he's not finding the "quality" that he's looking for here. I also wanted to mention that none of our other customers seem to have a problem with everything they buy breaking on them - we do sell quality products.

"Do you guys have an employee of the month award?" he inquired, out of the blue. I replied that we did. He had the nerve to suggest, "Maybe you should have a returner-of-the-year-award." "You'd certainly be winning," I quipped, frustrated that I couldn't say more. He knows we know what he's doing, and knows we can't do anything about it!!! We've been tracking his returns in a logbook (perhaps, when we gather enough documentation, there *will* be something we can do), and when I was finally finished with him I logged another $150 worth of stuff. That jerk. He gave me another 20 minutes of work, recording his returns and tagging all 8 items with "Damaged" and a description of the problem.

The next time I see him, I'm going to tell him that he can take his sorry butt somewhere else and never step foot in my store again.

Well, I would - but we don't say things like that in my profession.