politeness and shopping
Oct. 1st, 2008 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
same_skyWhen I worked at the produce market, there was an old man who came in a few times per week. We called him Grumpy Old Man. He liked to squeeze the tomatoes and complain about the way I bagged the groceries and the price of green beans. He was so unpleasant to be around, and I would get mad just seeing his car pull into the parking lot. One day, I decided that I had had enough out of him, and I started being outrageously nice to him instead of just civil. When he complained about the price, I apologized profusely and explained to him about the drought. When he complained about the bananas not being to his exact shade of green, I rushed to the back to find him a bunch from the other box. I talked about the weather, I smiled and made every effort to hide my feelings for him. He was not easily won, Grumpy Old Man, but the day soon came that he would grin when he saw me and he would talk to me as he paid his bill, and he stopped complaining about the green beans. It's hard to hate someone who is unfailingly pleasant and helpful, you know?
The thing is, being that kind to people who are constantly rude to you can be almost an insult to them. I think it reminds them that they are being petty and small. In any case, it's no secret that being nice gets you farther than being a jerk, and I've often found that to be the case when it comes to dealing with customer service folk. I used to be more inclined to let it go if I was overcharged by a small amount, but I have come to realize that showing a backbone may help bring about a little change, and also, I just don't have enough money to give it away. I suppose that my new couponing habit has really taught me how quickly it all adds up, and that makes it feel more worthwhile to go after these things. Like tonight, when I sat down with my Kmart receipt and honestly could not figure out how they arrived at a total of $12.77 when I should have only been charged somewhere around four dollars plus tax. So I went back after dinner (a solitary trip! The YAY!) and politely inquired. The response was not so polite. Actually, the witch was downright rude to me, throwing her hands around talking about how "this woman THINKS she was overcharged" in that way that made it clear that she knew I hadn't been. [Sidenote: I wonder if programmers are more likely than non-programmers to accept that the computer actually CAN make mistakes?] I was ever-so-polite in response, apologized more than once for the trouble, and then I kept my mouth shut. I had a hard time with that, but I kept a smile on my face and stopped trying to explain what the problem was when it was clear that no one wanted to believe me until they figured it out for themselves. Silence works even better than Politeness sometimes. Twenty minutes later, the woman was no longer seething with frustration, and she gave up on trying to do the math and just credited my card nine dollars, and she was fairly friendly while she did it. Yay! I hacked Kmart using the rare but formidable weapons of common human courtesy! Awesome. So I would like to tell you that for a whopping total of $3.68, I bought three bottles of Dove body wash, two bottles of Gilette men's shampoo, one bottle of Head & Shoulders shampoo, one bottle of Pert shampoo, a Pantene styling product, three L'Oreal eyeshadows, six nail art decal things, three tubes of Colgate, one Crest kids toothpaste, two Easy Macs and one no-spill bubbles bottle that was on clearance for $0.75. Muahahahahahaaa!!!!! One bottle of bodywash? Regular price $4.29, plus tax. You know what's even better? I found the coupons for several of those items inside a booklet in the store.
When I got home, I found out that my baby cried for Mama for twenty minutes of the forty that I was gone. I sold my baby's tears for nine dollars, apparently. The mommy guilt, it will get you every time.
My husband just said I had a big ass.
Okay, he SAID that he had to plug in my new hard drive (oh, yeah! I didn't mention that my sweetie woobles love bug bought me a new external 500G hard drive! He is awesome. Yay!) in the front because I am "full in the back". I think we all know what that means. Boyo will be sleeping on the couch henceforth! hehe.
On that note, I think I'll go snag him away from his computer so we can have a little time together. We didn't have time for it last night after the mammoth LJ meme.. it was a little longer than I thought it was. :)
The thing is, being that kind to people who are constantly rude to you can be almost an insult to them. I think it reminds them that they are being petty and small. In any case, it's no secret that being nice gets you farther than being a jerk, and I've often found that to be the case when it comes to dealing with customer service folk. I used to be more inclined to let it go if I was overcharged by a small amount, but I have come to realize that showing a backbone may help bring about a little change, and also, I just don't have enough money to give it away. I suppose that my new couponing habit has really taught me how quickly it all adds up, and that makes it feel more worthwhile to go after these things. Like tonight, when I sat down with my Kmart receipt and honestly could not figure out how they arrived at a total of $12.77 when I should have only been charged somewhere around four dollars plus tax. So I went back after dinner (a solitary trip! The YAY!) and politely inquired. The response was not so polite. Actually, the witch was downright rude to me, throwing her hands around talking about how "this woman THINKS she was overcharged" in that way that made it clear that she knew I hadn't been. [Sidenote: I wonder if programmers are more likely than non-programmers to accept that the computer actually CAN make mistakes?] I was ever-so-polite in response, apologized more than once for the trouble, and then I kept my mouth shut. I had a hard time with that, but I kept a smile on my face and stopped trying to explain what the problem was when it was clear that no one wanted to believe me until they figured it out for themselves. Silence works even better than Politeness sometimes. Twenty minutes later, the woman was no longer seething with frustration, and she gave up on trying to do the math and just credited my card nine dollars, and she was fairly friendly while she did it. Yay! I hacked Kmart using the rare but formidable weapons of common human courtesy! Awesome. So I would like to tell you that for a whopping total of $3.68, I bought three bottles of Dove body wash, two bottles of Gilette men's shampoo, one bottle of Head & Shoulders shampoo, one bottle of Pert shampoo, a Pantene styling product, three L'Oreal eyeshadows, six nail art decal things, three tubes of Colgate, one Crest kids toothpaste, two Easy Macs and one no-spill bubbles bottle that was on clearance for $0.75. Muahahahahahaaa!!!!! One bottle of bodywash? Regular price $4.29, plus tax. You know what's even better? I found the coupons for several of those items inside a booklet in the store.
When I got home, I found out that my baby cried for Mama for twenty minutes of the forty that I was gone. I sold my baby's tears for nine dollars, apparently. The mommy guilt, it will get you every time.
My husband just said I had a big ass.
Okay, he SAID that he had to plug in my new hard drive (oh, yeah! I didn't mention that my sweetie woobles love bug bought me a new external 500G hard drive! He is awesome. Yay!) in the front because I am "full in the back". I think we all know what that means. Boyo will be sleeping on the couch henceforth! hehe.
On that note, I think I'll go snag him away from his computer so we can have a little time together. We didn't have time for it last night after the mammoth LJ meme.. it was a little longer than I thought it was. :)
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 08:20 am (UTC)I accidentally read "shag" and nearly lost my tea over the keyboard. Not that you can't do that of course. I had just never expected to see you write about it. Then I reread the sentence and reality seeped in through my braincells. Time for new glasses I think. :)
I agree that being nice gets you much further than being a jerk. And how bloody rude to question your wanting to know the correct charge. I can imagine that they'd be snarky if you'd marched in there yelling and screaming about being robbed blind by them, but a polite query should be met by a swift, neutral offer to check it out for you, whether you are right or wrong.
Like you, I used to be silent here in Sweden if overcharged at the supermarket, but now I keep an eagle eye on the cash register and speak up, even if the lines are long and the amount small. It often happens here that an item on special is not credited with the sale price etc. I would have spoken up back home, but here I'm more nervous as I've had enough of the "bloody foreigner" looks as soon as I open my mouth, that it saps your confidence. But the whole "you must have misunderstood" argument wore pretty thin quite quickly, so I started to stand my ground AND point out that I understood perfectly, even if I spoke Swedish with a funny accent.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 12:09 pm (UTC)Persnickety women, unite! ;)
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Date: 2008-10-02 12:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 12:34 pm (UTC)I want to do that mammoth LJ meme b/c it is the most interesting one I've seen in ages, but just the thought of linking to every LJer I've met is making me run scared.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 06:22 pm (UTC)The Semagic pull-down thingie helps with the linking. Course, I don't have to link to as many as you will!
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Date: 2008-10-02 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 06:20 pm (UTC)I figure that I won't need to buy shampoo again for years at this point, but I am planning on giving some of it away, first to my family, and then I will probably donate anything else they don't neeed. I'm stockpiling at the moment and probably won't be doing much with it until Christmas. My parents do this stocking thing, where they wrap up a bunch (like, twenty) very small gifts. They're usually toiletries or accessories or small cooking things, less than two or three dollars a piece, sometimes free. We usually have more fun out of that than we do the big gifts. (Like the year that my parents wrapped up a couple of fast-food plastic spoons for M.. we still laugh about that.) Last year I decided that this year, I'd like to add some gifts to the stockings so it would be even more fun for my parents. They wrap them up for each other but usually know everything that's in it. So, I'm saving everything up until I can sort through it all at Christmas time and decide what to wrap up for them and my niece. Also, if you think I have a lot of shampoo, you should see the toothpastes. It's insane. I think every member of my extended family will get toothpaste this year. The free stuff is great, and I will enjoy the notion of helping my family out a little bit, but a large part of this hobby is the thrill of the hunt. Maybe THAT is why I gave up on Packrat.. replaced it with a different kind of collecting. ;)