There are just some people out there who like to be difficult, and today provided me with the pleasure of dealing with one such person.
It all started when a very tall man approached the pawn counter and asked me how much we offered for VHS tapes. I have been trained to ask how many VHS tapes they have because we base the price off the quantity. For example, if they have ten tapes then we offer twenty-five cents, but if they have three hundred tapes we offer five cents. Clearly, one main reason for this price tiering is to discourage customers from selling mass quantities of VHS tapes to us because no one wants them anymore. So, when the man told me he had about 90 tapes, I responded that we could give him ten cents for each.
At this point, a woman butted into the conversation, asking the tall man how much we were offering for the tapes. He told her and this woman was not pleased. She began ranting about how we used to give a quarter per tape and that she'd rather donate the tapes then sell it to us because we were ripping her off. This may make me horrible person, but I kind of enjoyed this. I hate dealing with VHS tapes. They're old and crappy and hard to sell. Please, keep your tapes. So, if I don't have to look through dozens of tapes and then find a place to store them in our already overflowing storage room where I know they'll end up rotting away, then I'm a happy pawn broker. I didn't expect to have much more interaction with this ridiculous woman, but I was wrong.
After raising a stink about the price of the tapes, she pulled a pawn contract out of her purse. I tried to look at the contract so I could use the transaction number to pull up her account, but she must have thought I was up to something much more devious because she snatched it out of my sight and put it back into her purse. I asked if I could see the ticket, just so I could make sure I was pulling up the correct loan, but she refused my request and told me to just pull up her account with her name--which she then provided. Her original intent was to pay the interest she owed on her loan, but when I pulled up her account and provided her with the amount of the interest, she wanted to know how much it would be to redeem her item. And this is when the real struggle began.
Now, the only way we can give out information about a pawn loan is if the owner of the loan shows us their ID or if they have written and signed a note giving someone else permission to pick up their possession(s). Normally when I ask a customer to see their ID, they produce it without hesitation because they understand how our system works and appreciate the precautions we take to keep their information private. But when I asked to see this woman's ID, she told me she didn't have it on her. She even looked through her oversized woman's wallet and was unable to locate it. Long story short, she argued with me that it was her loan and that I should be able to just give her the information. She wouldn't listen to me when I mentioned protocol or customer confidentiality and insisted that I just give her the information. In the end, she paid the interest and signed a new loan contract--which actually gives out a lot of information about the loan itself--what is in the loan, the amount due on it, the interest, the due date, etc. Upon seeing the wealth of information on this contract, she began to rant about how ridiculous our system of confidentiality is because I couldn't give her that information without seeing her ID but she got it in the end because she paid her interest. I saw a shred of a valid point in this, but it's more likely that if someone is paying the interest of a loan that they're more trustworthy versus someone who is trying to snoop around into people's accounts.
After this fiasco came to a close, she said that she would go ahead and sell us the VHS tapes at ten cents a piece. Apparently, she changed her mind about donating them to Goodwill. The tall man asked if we had a cart he could borrow to bring the tapes into the store. We do have such a cart, but if someone is going to take the cart out of the store unattended then they are required to give us their ID to hold while they do so. It's not a big deal for most people, but the man didn't have his ID on him and the woman began to rant about how ridiculous this store policy was. At this point, we were in the middle of a rush and I would have preferred to have just given them the cart so they could bring in the tapes by themselves, but I had to go outside with him to load up the cart. Furthermore, I told her that without her ID, she wouldn't be able to sell us anything because it would have been required by law for us to see it. And then the woman flipped open her wallet and showed me her driver's license. So, when I had asked for her ID earlier, instead of showing it to me, she lied about not having it, put on a show as if she had tried to find it, and then argued with me for several minutes about not needing her ID when she had it right there the entire time. Why she did this I will never know and hope to never know. When I asked if I could take the woman's ID, she refused to take it out from behind the clear shield of her wallet, forcing me to accompany the man outside with the cart.
When we got to his vehicle with the cart, there was clearly more than ninety tapes. There was more like two hundred and fifty. Once we got the tapes into the store, I informed them that since there was a much larger quantity than they had informed us about that we could only offer them five cents a tape. As you could imagine, this set the woman off again. I tried my best to look sympathetic but doubt it was very convincing. She pointed out that our price tiering was immoral and didn't make any sense, but what didn't make sense to me was how she could think we wanted to buy hundreds of VHS tapes that 1) we would probably never sell OR 2) if we did by some miracle sell them to someone still interested in using such archaic technology--that they'd be bought for next to nothing.
So, what the woman did next was both shocking and impressive. She said that she wouldn't sell all of her tapes to us but just ninety of them so she could get them for ten cents a piece instead of five. Touche. Touche, ranty lady.
This sent me on the task of looking through the trash bags that had been filled to the point of bursting. Most of the tape we actually wouldn't have been able to buy off her, anyway. We require that they 1) have a running time of 90 minutes or longer, and 2) come in their original boxes. Many of her tapes failed to fill one or both of the requirements. But as I was sorting through the ones we could actually take in, she began to give me orders on which ones she wanted to keep--children's movies, for example. In the end, I found ninety tapes, gave her nine dollars for them, and then helped them load the excess tapes back into their vehicle. While I was helping them do this, the tall man muttered "I hate them" under his breath. Unsure if he was talking about me and my fellow co-workers, I asked him what he'd said. He responded with another "I hate them" and then nodded towards some people down the row of cars. He then told me he would have really enjoyed physically assaulting them with nonchalance that did not match his gruff language or attitude.
Wheeling the cart back into the store, I considered wishing these demanding customers to have a good day. The key word of that sentence would be "considered". In truth, I sent them off with no such wishes even though I appreciated their quirks. I may have been frustrated for a moment or two, but I realize that when the frustration fades that I'm left with blog gold.
29 September 2010
28 September 2010
Glitter Dragons and Sexy (Sometimes Lesbian) Fairies
From time to time the store manager enjoys bringing in large quantities of objects with strange themes. The current theme is : Glitter Dragons and Sexy (Sometimes Lesbian) Fairies.
The pawn shop now has a table designated for small statues of dragons that are covered in glitter--what a mess, let me tell you--as well as statues of fairies that are neither cute nor cartoonish but sexual temptresses that seem eager to show off their taut upper thighs and expansive cleavage.There are also moderately sized framed pictures of additional sensual dark fairies. One is standing on the edge of a cliff that overlooks a stormy ocean. She is very pale and dressed entirely in black, only the back of her dress has been cut away to reveal her firm buttocks, giving a strong impression that she had just stepped off the set of a Lady Gaga music video. And as strange as it was, I kind of liked it--but not as much as I enjoyed teasing my boss, who has a very innocent demeanor about her, about the questionable merchandise she brought into the shop. There was another picture that was especially productive in my teasing. This was a medium close-up of two kissing fairies--both clearly female--one laying on the ground and the other leaning over her lover. But to bring this picture into complete focus, it must also be understood that there was blood tricking from the mouth of the fairie who was laying on the ground, leaving me to wonder if she was dead, injured, or being devoured by the other fairie. I perhaps will never be given the correct answer, but perhaps that is the true beauty behind this humbly priced piece of wall art--not the kinky, Gothic lesbianism, but the allure of an unsolvable mystery.
Moving on, I brought this intriguing picture to the attention of my boss, and melodramatically demanded, "You bought LESBIAN FAIRIES?" She laughed, pointed to the bleeding fairie laying on the ground, and then responded that "This one could be a guy". Oh, no, dear boss, it could not. It most certainly could not. But that's okay. I don't judge. But I did make sure to bring the lesbian fairies to the attention of each of my co-workers. At one point, one co-worker laughed and said our boss had told him that she had bought the S&M fairies because they were similar to the stuff in the Twilight movies. I responded that if that's what Twilight was about that I needed to start watching those movies because I had been grossly misinformed about their content.
The pawn shop now has a table designated for small statues of dragons that are covered in glitter--what a mess, let me tell you--as well as statues of fairies that are neither cute nor cartoonish but sexual temptresses that seem eager to show off their taut upper thighs and expansive cleavage.There are also moderately sized framed pictures of additional sensual dark fairies. One is standing on the edge of a cliff that overlooks a stormy ocean. She is very pale and dressed entirely in black, only the back of her dress has been cut away to reveal her firm buttocks, giving a strong impression that she had just stepped off the set of a Lady Gaga music video. And as strange as it was, I kind of liked it--but not as much as I enjoyed teasing my boss, who has a very innocent demeanor about her, about the questionable merchandise she brought into the shop. There was another picture that was especially productive in my teasing. This was a medium close-up of two kissing fairies--both clearly female--one laying on the ground and the other leaning over her lover. But to bring this picture into complete focus, it must also be understood that there was blood tricking from the mouth of the fairie who was laying on the ground, leaving me to wonder if she was dead, injured, or being devoured by the other fairie. I perhaps will never be given the correct answer, but perhaps that is the true beauty behind this humbly priced piece of wall art--not the kinky, Gothic lesbianism, but the allure of an unsolvable mystery.
Moving on, I brought this intriguing picture to the attention of my boss, and melodramatically demanded, "You bought LESBIAN FAIRIES?" She laughed, pointed to the bleeding fairie laying on the ground, and then responded that "This one could be a guy". Oh, no, dear boss, it could not. It most certainly could not. But that's okay. I don't judge. But I did make sure to bring the lesbian fairies to the attention of each of my co-workers. At one point, one co-worker laughed and said our boss had told him that she had bought the S&M fairies because they were similar to the stuff in the Twilight movies. I responded that if that's what Twilight was about that I needed to start watching those movies because I had been grossly misinformed about their content.
22 September 2010
Drug Scales, Scandalous Pictures, Autographs, and Chainsaws
I have a soft spot in my heart for people who have reformed their lives. Not only do I believe they deserve a certain degree of respect for having the willpower to change their attitudes, alter their habits, and conquer their addictions, but there is something in me that makes me melt when a friendly person tells me about their former self without any inhibition whatsoever. For example, a woman came up to the pawn counter today and wanted to take a loan out on a digital camera she had. I took a look at the camera, offered her a price, and then she said she was also curious to see how much she could get for a small digital scale which she pulled from her purse and handed to me.
Without any shame, she happily told me that she had found the scale in her storage unit and that she had originally gotten it in the 1980s to use for selling cocaine. Even though there was no white residue on the scale itself, I had a strong desire to pull my hand back. Instead, I smiled and said "Oh, wow." She nodded and then told me how she had also found a picture of her smoking marijuana from a large bong, but that she didn't remember ever doing any other drugs than cocaine--but that she must have because that's what she was doing in the picture she'd found. Somehow my uncomfortable laugh urged her onward to tell me how she had also discovered an autographed picture of the actress Rita Hayworth in her storage unit along with other personal belongings that were "very interesting" (more drug paraphernalia, perhaps). At this point, she pulled an envelope of some sort from her purse and clutched it to her chest. She asked me if I thought such a picture would be worth much. I offered a distracted shrug and tried to continue finishing her transaction.
After completing her loan, the woman kindly thanked me and said she was going to look around the store for a little bit. That was fine with me. But when she said she was interested in putting a John Deere chainsaw on lay-a-way, I almost laughed aloud. Drug scales, scandalous pictures, autographs, and chainsaws . . . what an encounter. But through it all, there was a part of me that thought she was a cute woman. It's a little strange to find the awkwardness of her unrestricted disbursement of her former drug habits to be endearing, but I do.
Without any shame, she happily told me that she had found the scale in her storage unit and that she had originally gotten it in the 1980s to use for selling cocaine. Even though there was no white residue on the scale itself, I had a strong desire to pull my hand back. Instead, I smiled and said "Oh, wow." She nodded and then told me how she had also found a picture of her smoking marijuana from a large bong, but that she didn't remember ever doing any other drugs than cocaine--but that she must have because that's what she was doing in the picture she'd found. Somehow my uncomfortable laugh urged her onward to tell me how she had also discovered an autographed picture of the actress Rita Hayworth in her storage unit along with other personal belongings that were "very interesting" (more drug paraphernalia, perhaps). At this point, she pulled an envelope of some sort from her purse and clutched it to her chest. She asked me if I thought such a picture would be worth much. I offered a distracted shrug and tried to continue finishing her transaction.
After completing her loan, the woman kindly thanked me and said she was going to look around the store for a little bit. That was fine with me. But when she said she was interested in putting a John Deere chainsaw on lay-a-way, I almost laughed aloud. Drug scales, scandalous pictures, autographs, and chainsaws . . . what an encounter. But through it all, there was a part of me that thought she was a cute woman. It's a little strange to find the awkwardness of her unrestricted disbursement of her former drug habits to be endearing, but I do.
16 September 2010
Porn, Confessions, and Nervous Mothers
The pawn shop I work for takes in computers and laptops for their pawn loans, but only if the system meets several requirements. To offer the customer a price, there has to be a product key (so we can restore their computer to factory settings in case they never pay on their computer and we claim it after it becomes too far overdue), a moderately sized RAM and hard drive, and a processor that is somewhat up-to-date with current standards. In other words, the newer a computer is, the more we can offer them on the loan. Well, a woman came into the shop today and was looking for a loan on her laptop. I went into it to find the information I needed to price it and realized there was a disc in her disc drive. I asked if she wanted the disc taken out. She did. And to our great surprise, both mine and the customer's, when I opened the drive and took the disc out, it was a porno! The picture on the top of the DVD showed a woman sticking her naked butt in the air in the direction of another lustful looking woman. The customer gasped and quickly grabbed the DVD out of my hand and away from any eyes that might glance in that direction, apologized, and then rushed out of the store with the DVD. She returned moments later and assured me that her boyfriend was in big trouble.
In order to buy things with the generous employee discount that my pawn shop offers, one is required to have worked at least thirty days and have passed their first review after those initial thirty days. As it has been over a month and a half since I commenced my employment, I asked my boss when I would be having my review so I could start buying things. She said that I could go ahead without the review because the management was very behind on giving reviews and that it would probably be a few weeks before they would get to me. Having hoped for this response, I was very happy and mindlessly blurted out how I had been setting aside certain DVDs that I'd wanted to buy, calling it my "stash". My boss's mouth slumped into a frown and she told me that I should not have been doing that. I quickly apologized, inwardly scolding myself for speaking so thoughtlessly. She said it was okay but that I shouldn't do that any more, that if I wanted to buy anything that I needed to either put in on lay-a-way or purchase it immediately. I feel kind of guilty and somewhat embarrassed, but I don't think it'll stop me from dropping a hundred dollars on DVDs sometime next week. I have a very nice copy of Jumanji hidden away and can't wait to bust that one out.
A mother and her daughter came into the shop today with an RF modulator, a small DVD player, and a TV/DVD combo that was princess themed, complete with a wand-shaped remote and tiara that hooked into the top of the pink TV. The prices she was given for her belongings were not what was had been expecting and she told me she needed to step away from the counter for a moment to make a phone call. I told her that would be alright, thinking she needed to call someone to see if they still wanted to go ahead and sell their items at our prices. The woman and her daughter, however, didn't reappear for a half hour, and when they did, the mother was carrying a laptop computer. She asked me to appraise the laptop, I did, and it was still not sufficient, but she eventually took the offer on our loan price and used the money to purchase a pink violin for her 9-year-old daughter. The daughter was hilarious. She was very excited to be getting the violin and showed her mother how to measure the violin using her arm to make sure it was the right size for her. She also showed her mother the correct way to carry the violin and then proceeded to show her mother the wrong way, swinging it around by the neck and nearly dropping it herself. I'd never seen a mother so nervous in my life. She had her daughter set the violin down and then repeatedly told her she would need to be careful with it. She didn't seem to trust her daughter at all, and with the few moments of high energy that I witnessed, I think I know why. The violin comes with a 30 day money back guarantee, but I honestly don't know if it will stay in one piece that long.
In order to buy things with the generous employee discount that my pawn shop offers, one is required to have worked at least thirty days and have passed their first review after those initial thirty days. As it has been over a month and a half since I commenced my employment, I asked my boss when I would be having my review so I could start buying things. She said that I could go ahead without the review because the management was very behind on giving reviews and that it would probably be a few weeks before they would get to me. Having hoped for this response, I was very happy and mindlessly blurted out how I had been setting aside certain DVDs that I'd wanted to buy, calling it my "stash". My boss's mouth slumped into a frown and she told me that I should not have been doing that. I quickly apologized, inwardly scolding myself for speaking so thoughtlessly. She said it was okay but that I shouldn't do that any more, that if I wanted to buy anything that I needed to either put in on lay-a-way or purchase it immediately. I feel kind of guilty and somewhat embarrassed, but I don't think it'll stop me from dropping a hundred dollars on DVDs sometime next week. I have a very nice copy of Jumanji hidden away and can't wait to bust that one out.
A mother and her daughter came into the shop today with an RF modulator, a small DVD player, and a TV/DVD combo that was princess themed, complete with a wand-shaped remote and tiara that hooked into the top of the pink TV. The prices she was given for her belongings were not what was had been expecting and she told me she needed to step away from the counter for a moment to make a phone call. I told her that would be alright, thinking she needed to call someone to see if they still wanted to go ahead and sell their items at our prices. The woman and her daughter, however, didn't reappear for a half hour, and when they did, the mother was carrying a laptop computer. She asked me to appraise the laptop, I did, and it was still not sufficient, but she eventually took the offer on our loan price and used the money to purchase a pink violin for her 9-year-old daughter. The daughter was hilarious. She was very excited to be getting the violin and showed her mother how to measure the violin using her arm to make sure it was the right size for her. She also showed her mother the correct way to carry the violin and then proceeded to show her mother the wrong way, swinging it around by the neck and nearly dropping it herself. I'd never seen a mother so nervous in my life. She had her daughter set the violin down and then repeatedly told her she would need to be careful with it. She didn't seem to trust her daughter at all, and with the few moments of high energy that I witnessed, I think I know why. The violin comes with a 30 day money back guarantee, but I honestly don't know if it will stay in one piece that long.
13 September 2010
Three Important Lessons
Today I learned three very important lessons :
1) Do not take a taxi cab to a pawn shop when you do not have money to pay the fare, hoping that the items you intend to sell will cover it and leave you with extra spending money. The items may be worth very, very little or even turned away because they are broken, falling apart, or incomplete, leaving you unable to pay the disgruntled taxi driver or return home.
- I learned that this has happened repeatedly to a shocking number of our patrons. Now when the local taxi companies discover that someone wants a ride to our pawn shop, they ask if that person already has cash on them and denies service to those who do not because they have been stiffed one too many times and are now taking precautions.
2) Do not repeatedly tell your granddaughter that strangers will spank her if she does not start behaving.
- A trio of woman spanning three generations came into the pawn shop today, a grandmother, her daughter, and her daughter's daughter. The granddaughter was very hyper and kept running around the pawn shop, touching things, climbing, jumping, and babbling to herself while I showed her mother and grandmother various digital cameras from a glass case. At one point, the granddaughter came over to her mother and grandmother and began trying to grab things from the glass class and even climb inside of it. The grandmother told her granddaugther that I was the boss and that I would spank her if she didn't start behaving. I was horrified. The little girl, however, was not. She continued her naughty behavior and the grandmother offered several more threats of me spanking her, all the while I was fearing someone would overhear, misunderstand the situation, and start a chain of increasingly traumatic events that would thrust me into the middle of negative news coverage, a drawn out lawsuit, and a prison sentence that had no chance of parole. I think I escaped the situation unscathed, but still. Bad, Grandma! Bad!
3) Do not store your change in a place that makes it look like it is in your underwear.
- Normally, I like it when people pay with exact change, and I would encourage anyone to do so, but only if you do not have the habit of storing your various coins stored underneath your basketball shorts in a place that makes it appear that they have been rubbing against your genitals. The man who broke this very important rule today probably had additional shorts on underneath his basketball shorts, and his coins were probably in a pocket safe from contact with his sweaty man parts, but it sure looked like he was digging around his crotch for the change he pulled out. He handed the coins to me and I looked at them with disgust, thinking "I'm touching penis money. This is so wrong." Come to think of it, I never washed my hands after that.
1) Do not take a taxi cab to a pawn shop when you do not have money to pay the fare, hoping that the items you intend to sell will cover it and leave you with extra spending money. The items may be worth very, very little or even turned away because they are broken, falling apart, or incomplete, leaving you unable to pay the disgruntled taxi driver or return home.
- I learned that this has happened repeatedly to a shocking number of our patrons. Now when the local taxi companies discover that someone wants a ride to our pawn shop, they ask if that person already has cash on them and denies service to those who do not because they have been stiffed one too many times and are now taking precautions.
2) Do not repeatedly tell your granddaughter that strangers will spank her if she does not start behaving.
- A trio of woman spanning three generations came into the pawn shop today, a grandmother, her daughter, and her daughter's daughter. The granddaughter was very hyper and kept running around the pawn shop, touching things, climbing, jumping, and babbling to herself while I showed her mother and grandmother various digital cameras from a glass case. At one point, the granddaughter came over to her mother and grandmother and began trying to grab things from the glass class and even climb inside of it. The grandmother told her granddaugther that I was the boss and that I would spank her if she didn't start behaving. I was horrified. The little girl, however, was not. She continued her naughty behavior and the grandmother offered several more threats of me spanking her, all the while I was fearing someone would overhear, misunderstand the situation, and start a chain of increasingly traumatic events that would thrust me into the middle of negative news coverage, a drawn out lawsuit, and a prison sentence that had no chance of parole. I think I escaped the situation unscathed, but still. Bad, Grandma! Bad!
3) Do not store your change in a place that makes it look like it is in your underwear.
- Normally, I like it when people pay with exact change, and I would encourage anyone to do so, but only if you do not have the habit of storing your various coins stored underneath your basketball shorts in a place that makes it appear that they have been rubbing against your genitals. The man who broke this very important rule today probably had additional shorts on underneath his basketball shorts, and his coins were probably in a pocket safe from contact with his sweaty man parts, but it sure looked like he was digging around his crotch for the change he pulled out. He handed the coins to me and I looked at them with disgust, thinking "I'm touching penis money. This is so wrong." Come to think of it, I never washed my hands after that.
11 September 2010
The Return of The Queen
As it turns out The Queen of Sob Stories is a very regular customer in the pawn shop. She keeps bringing in lots of random items she wants to just get rid of. Unfortunately, she does not a sob story every time she comes in, but she still retains her crown due to the quality of her former lies. There have been several items we have had to turn away--a package of those disposable floss things, two unopened denture brushes, plates and tea cups she got from her "dead grandmother's" house (this could be another one of her lies--there is no telling with her), and two broken guitars. On the other hand, we did buy a 70 pound punching bag from her. I made polite conversation while I was ringing her up and told her how I could have really used one when I was a teenager. Two days later, The Queen came back into the shop with more items to sell, but she also had the chain from which you were supposed to hang the punching bag she sold us. She told me she "searched high and low" for me, obviously thinking I had said that I still wanted a punching bag (which I do, but didn't vocalize, as there is no room in my apartment for that). It was a very kind gesture, but she's still crazy, and, apparently, doesn't listen too well.
Today, a man asked me if we had any swiveling television stands for sale. We did not, but I told him it might be possible for us to order him one from a catalogue. As it turns out, it wasn't, and when I told him so, he went off asking about whether or not we could "broker" for him, find him one on Ebay, purchase it, and then sell it to him. Besides the fact that we would never do that, it is something that is clearly not the most economically sound method of getting something because we would then have to mark up the stand in order to sell it to him for a profit on our part. I skipped explaining the financial downfall of this and just gave him the simple answer "No, we can't do that. I'm sorry." He kept muttering to himself and wasn't making too much sense, but then he left and all was well . . . for a short while. After work, I went to a grocery store and began shopping. I was in the produce section and walked off from my cart for a moment. When I went back to get my cart, I saw the strange man who had asked about our Ebay brokering abilities--and he was walking off with my cart! I called out to him and he realized the mistake. I'm not sure if he recognized me from the pawn shop because he didn't say anything, but he kept looking at me and smiling as he went back to his cart and pushed it away. I'm sure it was an accident, but a little part of me likes to think he was seeking revenge for our refusal to "broker" for him.
Today, a man asked me if we had any swiveling television stands for sale. We did not, but I told him it might be possible for us to order him one from a catalogue. As it turns out, it wasn't, and when I told him so, he went off asking about whether or not we could "broker" for him, find him one on Ebay, purchase it, and then sell it to him. Besides the fact that we would never do that, it is something that is clearly not the most economically sound method of getting something because we would then have to mark up the stand in order to sell it to him for a profit on our part. I skipped explaining the financial downfall of this and just gave him the simple answer "No, we can't do that. I'm sorry." He kept muttering to himself and wasn't making too much sense, but then he left and all was well . . . for a short while. After work, I went to a grocery store and began shopping. I was in the produce section and walked off from my cart for a moment. When I went back to get my cart, I saw the strange man who had asked about our Ebay brokering abilities--and he was walking off with my cart! I called out to him and he realized the mistake. I'm not sure if he recognized me from the pawn shop because he didn't say anything, but he kept looking at me and smiling as he went back to his cart and pushed it away. I'm sure it was an accident, but a little part of me likes to think he was seeking revenge for our refusal to "broker" for him.
03 September 2010
The Queen of Sob Stories
There is a couple who often comes into the pawn shop to either sell or pawn a seemingly endless supply of electronics, jewelry, and DVDs. A while ago they had both pawned their wedding rings, but today they were finally able to pay off those loans and reclaim them. The couple peacefully slipped each other's ring on each other's finger in a pseudo-vow renewal ceremony inside the pawn shop. It's horrible to think they had to pawn their wedding rings, but it's great to see a couple stick together through what must have been dire financial circumstances. It may have been the cutest thing I will ever encounter in my life.
On another note, there is nothing cute about a woman I will hence forth be referred to as The Queen of Sob Stories (AKA The Queen, for short). How foolish I feel taking the bait she offered before I realized I was standing in the presence of such sob story royalty. She was standing next to the pawn counter, waiting to be served, and I asked her if she had already been helped. The Queen began unfolding a story of how she had been in an out of town car wreck a few weeks previously and had been hospitalized there for several days. Knowing that this unforeseeable tragedy would cause her to be late on paying some of her pawn loans, The Queen faxed a friend (whom I will hence forth refer to as The Peasant) a note saying that she gave permission for this friend to pay for and pick up her belongings. This was done, but The Peasant, for some undisclosed reason, pawned The Queen's reclaimed items back under The Peasant's name. But, The Queen informed me, that wasn't why she was there. Her father was going to pick up those items the next day. She just wanted to see how large of a loan she could get for an autographed football helmet and set of rookie trading cards. Unable to price items, especially such rare ones such as those, I went to a manager and told him about The Queen's request. My manager was not pleased. He had dealt with The Queen before and knew well of her powers of casting sob stories over unwary pawn shop employees. A while back, The Queen had called into the shop and spoke with this manager. At that time, she had several loans that were overdue and she was asking for information on how much she could get for pawning new, specific items. She was seeking these new loans because her father had recently died and she didn't even have the money to pay a hair stylist to cut his hair for the funeral. In fact, The Queen told my manager, she was cutting her dead father's hair while they spoke! And, sure enough, my manager could hear the buzzing of hair clippers in the background! A while after this phone call, The Queen came into the store accompanied by her father. And, no, he was not a reanimated corpse or zombie hungering for human flesh, but he had never died at all! She had lied about her father dying and had gone so far as to have hair clippers buzzing so my manager could hear them over the phone so as to make the sob story seem more real! On top of that, there had been other encounters with The Queen when she had told tales of having family heirlooms stolen from the delinquent teenagers next door, of her house starting on fire, and medical emergencies which required skin grafts. After telling me this, my manger sent me back to The Queen to inform her that it would be a few minutes before her items could be appraised for a loan. When I did so, The Queen became teary eyed and said she was so frustrated with our pawn shop because we "refused to work with" her. She then said she had lost a nephew in this out of town car wreck, at which point I had a difficult time choking back my laughter and keeping from smiling. If she was so shameless so as to lie about her father's death and then to even lie about having to cut his hair for the funeral I doubted she would think twice about lying about losing a nephew in a car wreck. Either way, dead nephew or not, she waited and was given a price much lower than the outrageous one she had been hoping to get. I fear she will order us to be beheaded for rebellion.
On another note, there is nothing cute about a woman I will hence forth be referred to as The Queen of Sob Stories (AKA The Queen, for short). How foolish I feel taking the bait she offered before I realized I was standing in the presence of such sob story royalty. She was standing next to the pawn counter, waiting to be served, and I asked her if she had already been helped. The Queen began unfolding a story of how she had been in an out of town car wreck a few weeks previously and had been hospitalized there for several days. Knowing that this unforeseeable tragedy would cause her to be late on paying some of her pawn loans, The Queen faxed a friend (whom I will hence forth refer to as The Peasant) a note saying that she gave permission for this friend to pay for and pick up her belongings. This was done, but The Peasant, for some undisclosed reason, pawned The Queen's reclaimed items back under The Peasant's name. But, The Queen informed me, that wasn't why she was there. Her father was going to pick up those items the next day. She just wanted to see how large of a loan she could get for an autographed football helmet and set of rookie trading cards. Unable to price items, especially such rare ones such as those, I went to a manager and told him about The Queen's request. My manager was not pleased. He had dealt with The Queen before and knew well of her powers of casting sob stories over unwary pawn shop employees. A while back, The Queen had called into the shop and spoke with this manager. At that time, she had several loans that were overdue and she was asking for information on how much she could get for pawning new, specific items. She was seeking these new loans because her father had recently died and she didn't even have the money to pay a hair stylist to cut his hair for the funeral. In fact, The Queen told my manager, she was cutting her dead father's hair while they spoke! And, sure enough, my manager could hear the buzzing of hair clippers in the background! A while after this phone call, The Queen came into the store accompanied by her father. And, no, he was not a reanimated corpse or zombie hungering for human flesh, but he had never died at all! She had lied about her father dying and had gone so far as to have hair clippers buzzing so my manager could hear them over the phone so as to make the sob story seem more real! On top of that, there had been other encounters with The Queen when she had told tales of having family heirlooms stolen from the delinquent teenagers next door, of her house starting on fire, and medical emergencies which required skin grafts. After telling me this, my manger sent me back to The Queen to inform her that it would be a few minutes before her items could be appraised for a loan. When I did so, The Queen became teary eyed and said she was so frustrated with our pawn shop because we "refused to work with" her. She then said she had lost a nephew in this out of town car wreck, at which point I had a difficult time choking back my laughter and keeping from smiling. If she was so shameless so as to lie about her father's death and then to even lie about having to cut his hair for the funeral I doubted she would think twice about lying about losing a nephew in a car wreck. Either way, dead nephew or not, she waited and was given a price much lower than the outrageous one she had been hoping to get. I fear she will order us to be beheaded for rebellion.
01 September 2010
Needy Customers
It is so funny how days have themes. Today's was : THE NEEDY CUSTOMER.
The whole string of shenanigans was kicked off by a couple who was paying off certain pawn loans in order to redeem specific items while just paying the interest on other loans in order to extend their pawn loan contracts. Things were complicated for numerous reasons which I will now list: 1) The man's driver's license was expired. This trips up the system when we try to do transactions in the computer. When I asked the man if he had renewed his license, thinking that he should have done it by then because it had been expired for over two months, he became very upset and said he used to have a CDL license but couldn't renew it until he paid $1,200 in fines. What these fines were for, he did not say. I quickly changed the topic because he kept talking louder and louder and gesturing wildly and I thought he was going to snap if I didn't distract him from the traumatic topic of his expired license. 2) The man and the woman both had numerous loans under each of their names in separate accounts. So, in order to serve them, I had to do everything twice instead of just once, this obviously required twice the amount of time it would have taken if it had all been under one account. 3) A rush hit during the middle of this painstaking experience. This caused an even bigger line of customers to form because of how long it was taking to serve them. 4) The items this couple was reclaiming were either difficult to find (imagine finding a few specific fishing rods that were mixed among dozens of fishing rods) or difficult to physically maneuver (they reclaimed three bikes, one of which was an enormous three wheeler with a huge metal compartment on the back of it. We actually had to lift it and carry it through the back rooms because we were reorganizing things and this bike wouldn't have fit through the narrow passage ways of random stuff that were growing their way out from the walls and shelves). 5) I screwed up a transaction and had to have the owner go back into the computer and fix it. 6) The copule re-pawned a bike they had just redeemed from a previous pawn loan. Luckily, it wasn't the enormous three wheeler.
The second needy customer was a woman who was looking for a small video recorder for her son. This son had previously been in the shop, had seen a specific type of recorder he had liked, and then sent his mother back to retrieve it. This dedicated mother was beyond concerned about getting the best deal. There were a couple different versions of the video recorder her son wanted and she asked me if I could find out exactly what the differences were between the two. This required looking up information about both models on the Internet, and even at that point, some of the details were a little fuzzy. These fuzzy details became monstrous concerns of hers and she spent a great deal asking me questions I had no answers to. However, she found a way to get around those concerns by asking me if I would be willing to charge both video recorders and then test each of them out to see which was of better quality. This would serve the purpose of finding out what each of them did and making sure that each used item worked properly. She wasn't terribly fond of the idea of buying used electronics, which is understandable, but this was getting ridiculous. I told her that I would be happy to charge both video recorders but she would have to come back and test them out on her own. She agreed and said she would be back tomorrow to test them both out. I, however, had more work to do. I first had to hunt down the proper charger for these recorders and then find a plug where I could leave them to charge without getting stolen or broken. That took several more moments of frustration.
The third needy customer was a woman who was accompanied by her surly teenage son. These two had spent more than a half hour searching through our DVDs and then brought several to the counter to buy. The mother spread her selection of movies across our wide counter as if she there was no chance of another customers needing to use the other portion of the counter which was dedicated for the second register. She began to carefully look at each disk, commenting on how dirty DVDs were and how much the thought of what germs were on them disgusted her. She repeatedly asked me if I thought various disks were scuffed and scratched beyond playability. Two of the disks looked like they had been sneezed on. There were dozens of dots which looked like dried splatters of some unknown liquid on them. She didn't buy these two, but the other 15 she did. At this point, she asked if it would have been better to go along with the current sale price or if she should pay full price for some of the DVDs so she could use her DVD hole punch card and get three free DVDs. Of course, the current five for ten dollar deal was much more economical. I told her so and she quickly agreed. Then, when she handed me a VISA card and I asked if I should process it as a debit or credit card, she told me to run it as a credit card because it was "better for me, but not so much for you." She was referring to certain fees merchants pay for credit card transactions. At this comment, her son shook his head and asked in an unamused and surprisingly deep voice if that was "really necessary?" The mother, looking embarassed, began to ramble out a justification for her comment. Priceless.
The whole string of shenanigans was kicked off by a couple who was paying off certain pawn loans in order to redeem specific items while just paying the interest on other loans in order to extend their pawn loan contracts. Things were complicated for numerous reasons which I will now list: 1) The man's driver's license was expired. This trips up the system when we try to do transactions in the computer. When I asked the man if he had renewed his license, thinking that he should have done it by then because it had been expired for over two months, he became very upset and said he used to have a CDL license but couldn't renew it until he paid $1,200 in fines. What these fines were for, he did not say. I quickly changed the topic because he kept talking louder and louder and gesturing wildly and I thought he was going to snap if I didn't distract him from the traumatic topic of his expired license. 2) The man and the woman both had numerous loans under each of their names in separate accounts. So, in order to serve them, I had to do everything twice instead of just once, this obviously required twice the amount of time it would have taken if it had all been under one account. 3) A rush hit during the middle of this painstaking experience. This caused an even bigger line of customers to form because of how long it was taking to serve them. 4) The items this couple was reclaiming were either difficult to find (imagine finding a few specific fishing rods that were mixed among dozens of fishing rods) or difficult to physically maneuver (they reclaimed three bikes, one of which was an enormous three wheeler with a huge metal compartment on the back of it. We actually had to lift it and carry it through the back rooms because we were reorganizing things and this bike wouldn't have fit through the narrow passage ways of random stuff that were growing their way out from the walls and shelves). 5) I screwed up a transaction and had to have the owner go back into the computer and fix it. 6) The copule re-pawned a bike they had just redeemed from a previous pawn loan. Luckily, it wasn't the enormous three wheeler.
The second needy customer was a woman who was looking for a small video recorder for her son. This son had previously been in the shop, had seen a specific type of recorder he had liked, and then sent his mother back to retrieve it. This dedicated mother was beyond concerned about getting the best deal. There were a couple different versions of the video recorder her son wanted and she asked me if I could find out exactly what the differences were between the two. This required looking up information about both models on the Internet, and even at that point, some of the details were a little fuzzy. These fuzzy details became monstrous concerns of hers and she spent a great deal asking me questions I had no answers to. However, she found a way to get around those concerns by asking me if I would be willing to charge both video recorders and then test each of them out to see which was of better quality. This would serve the purpose of finding out what each of them did and making sure that each used item worked properly. She wasn't terribly fond of the idea of buying used electronics, which is understandable, but this was getting ridiculous. I told her that I would be happy to charge both video recorders but she would have to come back and test them out on her own. She agreed and said she would be back tomorrow to test them both out. I, however, had more work to do. I first had to hunt down the proper charger for these recorders and then find a plug where I could leave them to charge without getting stolen or broken. That took several more moments of frustration.
The third needy customer was a woman who was accompanied by her surly teenage son. These two had spent more than a half hour searching through our DVDs and then brought several to the counter to buy. The mother spread her selection of movies across our wide counter as if she there was no chance of another customers needing to use the other portion of the counter which was dedicated for the second register. She began to carefully look at each disk, commenting on how dirty DVDs were and how much the thought of what germs were on them disgusted her. She repeatedly asked me if I thought various disks were scuffed and scratched beyond playability. Two of the disks looked like they had been sneezed on. There were dozens of dots which looked like dried splatters of some unknown liquid on them. She didn't buy these two, but the other 15 she did. At this point, she asked if it would have been better to go along with the current sale price or if she should pay full price for some of the DVDs so she could use her DVD hole punch card and get three free DVDs. Of course, the current five for ten dollar deal was much more economical. I told her so and she quickly agreed. Then, when she handed me a VISA card and I asked if I should process it as a debit or credit card, she told me to run it as a credit card because it was "better for me, but not so much for you." She was referring to certain fees merchants pay for credit card transactions. At this comment, her son shook his head and asked in an unamused and surprisingly deep voice if that was "really necessary?" The mother, looking embarassed, began to ramble out a justification for her comment. Priceless.
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