An older man came into the shop today with a box. He set the box on the counter and proudly told me that I had probably never seen what he was about to show me. Just from that, I could tell the next few minutes were going to be interesting. Not so much because I believed that the man had some impressive item in his possession, but because the man was so pompous that I knew he was going to be completely ridiculous.
Opening the box, the man began to pull out various parts from a bathroom faucet. Only, as the man informed me, this was no ordinary faucet, but a $1,600 bathroom faucet. Apparently, the various parts had been dipped in platinum or gold. He then shoved a piece of paper with details about the faucet into my face with triumph, thinking he had proven the worth and guaranteed himself a generous loan offer. What this man didn't realize is that we never taken pricing information from customers. I took the paper, set it down, and then called a manager over because I wasn't sure if we even took bathroom fixtures. After a quick exchange with the annoying man, my manager disappeared to go look up information about the faucet and I was left alone with the customer. I tried to go about my other pawn shop duties, but the man kept talking to me--only it wasn't good natured chit chat, but self-important rambling.
He told me that he used to have lots of money and that he originally bought the faucet to impress his wife. I responded that she probably would have been more impressed if he'd spent the money on buying her jewelry instead. It was meant to be a joke, but I don't think he enjoying my sense of humor. He then mentioned that the faucet was the only thing he still had from his days of financial abundance. I asked him what had caused him to lose all of his money, but he didn't respond to my question. Instead, he told me that I would never have enough money to buy such an expensive faucet and that I would probably never even see one again. I shrugged and told him I saw no point in buying a $1,600 bathroom faucet. Completely unaware of my subtle hostility, he asked me if I had ever heard of the brand of the faucet. It was Kohler. Of course, I'd heard of it. I told the man as much and then began to ignore him.
He kept asking me questions but I didn't respond. I usually hate it when the phone rings, but when it rang this specific morning I was very glad to answer it.
In the end, my manager ended up turning away the faucet to the great displeasure of the older man. When the elderly jerk had left, I told him about the rest of my encounter with the fancy faucet man and we both had a good laugh.
05 October 2010
04 October 2010
The Things Customers Are Willing To Tell Me
I try to be a good person, but there are many times when I feel cranky and just don't want to play nice with strangers. I'd rather ignore them and go about my business without being bothered. Unfortunately, this fierce desire for solitude usually occurs while at work when I'm forced to put on a happy face for an endless string of customers. When in these moods, my face is cemented in a stern expression and my voice is hardened with unquestionable surliness, but lately I've been playing a little game that I have titled: Reconnaissance Small Talk. This is, as the name suggests, making small talk with customers in hopes of them telling me something outrageous. The funny thing is that I usually win this one sided and slightly immoral game. It's amazing how little interest you need to show in order to open a flood gate of information.
For example, one woman told me all about how she had lost her job after working at a local hospital for over twenty years when she fell and broke her wrist. She had been a secretary and her healed wrist just didn't allow her to perform like she used to. This caused her employer to heartlessly label her unable to do her job properly and let her go without offering any compensation or type of severance package. This somehow lead into the then recent event of her daughter moving away to the local community college and how the apartment she had moved into had been filthy. In her devoted motherhood, the woman spent hours cleaning the apartment for her daughter (where the daughter was at the time, I have no clue, but it didn't sound like the recently unemployed mother had any help) and then complained to the office but was not compensated for her time.
One man haplessly mentioned that he was going to head out on vacation. When I asked him why he didn't seem too happy about it, he told me that he was heading to his brother's wedding. Now, the only reason I ever go to weddings is to eat food and cake--I mean--to show my support for the newly wedded couple--yeah--to show support . . . forget it, we all know it's all about the food. Anyway, I was going to say that at least there would be plenty to eat, but the man interrupted my joke and stormed ahead to inform me that he thought his brother was rushing into the marriage much too quickly. Apparently, this man's brother and his fiance had only known each other for three months and this was not a sufficient amount of time in his opinion. I might agree with this judgement in most cases, but my parents married quickly and they're still going strong after thirty years. There's also the fact that many courtships in my religion don't seem to last much longer than three months. Anyway, I wasn't totally disgusted with the brief engagement because I'd seen plenty of marriages that began that way and are still thriving today. I would have offered some comfort that it could all work out, but the man continued on to divulge that his brother was going to have a camouflage wedding. I had never heard of such a thing, but my imagination burst forth with images of a bucktooth bride in a camouflage dress and a groom with a mullet donning a fuzzy moss tuxedo amongst a milling crowd of barefooted people discussing Nascar. The man, however, interrupted this slackjawed daydream by telling me that he was upset with his brother because he wouldn't let him bring his dog to the wedding. The man just didn't see why he couldn't bring a dog to a camouflage wedding, but, of course, the answer is very obvious. Because having a dog in attendance just wouldn't be classy.
Another moment of greatness was when I noticed that a man had a large gash across one of his fingers between his first and middle knuckles. He was actually rubbing on hand sanitizer at the moment, making the wound look especially moist and disgusting. I asked the man if he'd gotten into a fight. As it turns out, the only fight he had was with gravity while upon a ladder. As you could imagine, he lost the battle with this eternal law of nature, but as you probably didn't anticipate, he fell into a dumpster and scraped his hand open. I have since repeatedly played a dramatization of this event in my mind.
On the other hand, there are some people who are not so willing to talk. For example, I once handed a woman a pawn contract along with a yellow pen so that she could finalize the transaction with her signature. This woman, however, stared down at the pen and harshly demanded that I give her a different one. Taken off guard, I asked her to repeat herself. Without removing her eyes from the pen, she told me she needed a different color of pen. Recognizing something ridiculous, I asked her why. She responded that yellow was an unlucky color. I continued staring at her while she continued to stare at the pen as if it was a rattlesnake about to strike and asked "Really?" She said it was and I gave her a green pen. I wanted to push this topic further, but I dropped it. The way the woman was acting made me fearful that inquiring deeper into her superstitions would get me stabbed, most likely with an unlucky yellow pen.
For example, one woman told me all about how she had lost her job after working at a local hospital for over twenty years when she fell and broke her wrist. She had been a secretary and her healed wrist just didn't allow her to perform like she used to. This caused her employer to heartlessly label her unable to do her job properly and let her go without offering any compensation or type of severance package. This somehow lead into the then recent event of her daughter moving away to the local community college and how the apartment she had moved into had been filthy. In her devoted motherhood, the woman spent hours cleaning the apartment for her daughter (where the daughter was at the time, I have no clue, but it didn't sound like the recently unemployed mother had any help) and then complained to the office but was not compensated for her time.
One man haplessly mentioned that he was going to head out on vacation. When I asked him why he didn't seem too happy about it, he told me that he was heading to his brother's wedding. Now, the only reason I ever go to weddings is to eat food and cake--I mean--to show my support for the newly wedded couple--yeah--to show support . . . forget it, we all know it's all about the food. Anyway, I was going to say that at least there would be plenty to eat, but the man interrupted my joke and stormed ahead to inform me that he thought his brother was rushing into the marriage much too quickly. Apparently, this man's brother and his fiance had only known each other for three months and this was not a sufficient amount of time in his opinion. I might agree with this judgement in most cases, but my parents married quickly and they're still going strong after thirty years. There's also the fact that many courtships in my religion don't seem to last much longer than three months. Anyway, I wasn't totally disgusted with the brief engagement because I'd seen plenty of marriages that began that way and are still thriving today. I would have offered some comfort that it could all work out, but the man continued on to divulge that his brother was going to have a camouflage wedding. I had never heard of such a thing, but my imagination burst forth with images of a bucktooth bride in a camouflage dress and a groom with a mullet donning a fuzzy moss tuxedo amongst a milling crowd of barefooted people discussing Nascar. The man, however, interrupted this slackjawed daydream by telling me that he was upset with his brother because he wouldn't let him bring his dog to the wedding. The man just didn't see why he couldn't bring a dog to a camouflage wedding, but, of course, the answer is very obvious. Because having a dog in attendance just wouldn't be classy.
Another moment of greatness was when I noticed that a man had a large gash across one of his fingers between his first and middle knuckles. He was actually rubbing on hand sanitizer at the moment, making the wound look especially moist and disgusting. I asked the man if he'd gotten into a fight. As it turns out, the only fight he had was with gravity while upon a ladder. As you could imagine, he lost the battle with this eternal law of nature, but as you probably didn't anticipate, he fell into a dumpster and scraped his hand open. I have since repeatedly played a dramatization of this event in my mind.
On the other hand, there are some people who are not so willing to talk. For example, I once handed a woman a pawn contract along with a yellow pen so that she could finalize the transaction with her signature. This woman, however, stared down at the pen and harshly demanded that I give her a different one. Taken off guard, I asked her to repeat herself. Without removing her eyes from the pen, she told me she needed a different color of pen. Recognizing something ridiculous, I asked her why. She responded that yellow was an unlucky color. I continued staring at her while she continued to stare at the pen as if it was a rattlesnake about to strike and asked "Really?" She said it was and I gave her a green pen. I wanted to push this topic further, but I dropped it. The way the woman was acting made me fearful that inquiring deeper into her superstitions would get me stabbed, most likely with an unlucky yellow pen.
29 September 2010
Blog Gold
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.
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.
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