#retail humor

Woman comes into our store today carrying a plastic grocery bag with what appear to be white sheets.
“Good afternoon. Do you have a return?”
“Well, yeah,” woman starts pulling the sheeting contents from the bag, “I bought these sheets from you, and I don’t use them very often really,” (I’ve heard this story line before. And people think they’re original.) “You see, they’ve just worn right down through. Look here… just a huge hole.”
I look at the sheets. There is a huge hole right in the middle of the fitted sheet. “You bought these sheets here?”
“Yeah. I’ve had your sheets before, and they’ve held up just fine. These, I dunno. They must be defective.”
“Hmmm, I don’t recognize this pattern,” it’s a woven white on white polka dot pattern, “If you bought it here, it must have been before I started working here. Let me see if we have a purchase profile for you. What’s your last name?” She spells it for me. No entries come up, “Seems we don’t have you in our computer. Let me just grab my manager and see if she can help you. How long ago do you think you bought these?”
“Maybe a year ago…”
“Okay. Let me just get my manager to help you with this.”

Grab my manager and direct her over to the register. I hate assessing old bedding - mostly because the items that come in have generally are normal wear and tear that happens when you don’t take the best care of the bedding (or they’re about five years older than the customers admit to), and people expect their bedding to hold up like it’s spun from titanium spider silk. I go back to what I was doing while keeping an ear open to hear what’s going on with the current situation.

The woman again unfolds the sheets to show my manager the hole. “You bought these here?” my manager asks.
“Well, yeah… at least I think so,” the woman replies. She digs into the sheet searching for a tag and finds one, “Oh my goodness. This is a Martha Stewart sheet set! Maybe that’s why it didn’t hold up… I’m so sorry. How embarrassing! No wonder neither of you recognized it. You would think that I would have thought to look at the tag before bringing them here.”

We would think you would have thought…

retail associate culture is leaving your favorite store after an hour or so shopping (for once in your life) and accidentally telling the clerk ‘thanks for coming in, have a nice day’