If You Give A Customer A Coupon (How to Be a Good Customer - Part 2)

Almost 2 years ago, I posted on my old blog some advice for being a good customer. Re-reading it, it all still holds true, although at the time, it was written from the perspective of a cashier at a farm supply store. Now that I am back in retail (this time at a lingerie & loungewear store - thank god) after having been stuck at a desk job for a year, I am unpleasantly reminded of all the little nuances of working in retail that I had forgotten.

Especially...

Coupons.

The idea of coupons are pretty simple. I scan it, it's applied to the transaction, you get a deal. Everything's cool.

That's the best-case scenario though, really.

Here's a neat little fact: The transaction does not end at the printing of the receipt; it ends the second you run your card. Once you have either swiped or inserted the chip, you have agreed to pay as much money as I, and the computer, have told you that you owed.

A coupon will change that amount. Therefore, it's very important to apply the coupon before you agree to pay the amount.

It's amazing to me how many people don't understand this.

The items are rung.
Payment is processed.
Items are bagged.
Receipt is printed.

"Did you get my coupon?"

Oh yeah, the one you didn't tell me you had? Sure, of course, working this minimum wage retail job gives me magic all-knowing psychic powers and I can always tell automatically when someone has a coupon.

Here's another fun little tidbit: I'm not allowed to offer you every discount in the book. The fact that I'm hired is already costing the company money, so my job is to make them more money by selling things as fairly as possible so that they can break even. It is entirely your job to find the discounts. If you think you might have a reward from the loyalty program, ask before you run your card.

ESPECIALLY if your transaction was an exchange.

Because, when we inevitably go back and return the whole thing (funny thing - you can't return a return - and, also, returns impact the sales reports negatively, because this is a small boutique, not a mega corporation), you're going to ask why the amounts are different.

That doesn't seem right, you say. That's returning more money than I paid.

First of all, why would you turn that down? Second of all, yes, because the value of the return affected your subtotal the first time around. You bought an amount of merchandise that was worth more than what you paid, because you also returned things in the same transaction.

I can see that now, in retrospect. But, at the time, it's half an hour until we close, it's the end of our shifts, we're tired, we're under pressure, and we're confused, and we're trying to figure out why the totals are different, because all we want is for you to be happy.

So we spend twenty whole minutes trying to explain to you how this works and why we need to do two separate transactions to do the return and then buy back the merchandise. The coupon specifies a dollar amount, and it will therefore not work if we do all the returning and then the re-ringing to come out to zero.

It takes forever. I've asked for your phone number for rewards four times now. I've memorized it (because I gather you're also the type to get uppity about putting stuff on your loyalty account, which is something I detailed in my first post). My manager wants to go home, I want to go home, you want to leave, nobody is having a good time, but we're trying to figure it out with sympathy and with cheerful attitudes, because that's our job.

You turn to your friend and stage whisper, "They'd better hope I don't review them this time," as if we're not human beings with feelings that can be hurt. As if we're not people who have jobs we need to keep to pay our bills.

Twenty minutes, three transactions, and five printed receipts later, and you seem to finally be somewhat satisfied.

All of that.

For.

Twenty.

Dollars.

Off a $200 purchase.

Good for you.

The moral of this very true and very recent story is to ask for coupons at the beginning of the transaction. And if twenty dollars matters enough to you to make that much effort to get it back because you missed an opportunity to use a coupon, maybe you shouldn't be spending $200 on lingerie.

When you run your card, it's too late.