The Rules of Retail: The Item is Never Free

I've decided to return to my little pet project with a second installment, because I randomly found the list while I was tidying up my desk. Here is my next Rule of Retail.

The Item is Never Free
Seriously. The item is simply never free. Never. This applies even to buy one, get one free deals. We have a stock system to keep, customer. Everything that goes out the door must be scanned into the system so we KNOW it went out the door. Typically, a buy one, get one free deal is actually just knocking the price of the items in half. This brings up another point on that particular example: Don't assume we're overcharging you or trying to rip you off. On the rare occasion this happens, it isn't some dark ploy on the part of the cashier, because we don't GET anything out of doing that. It's a mistake. Our bad. Like you never fuck up some bit of paperwork at your job, tubby?

But back to the rule. There's a series of odd effects that always occur in retail, behaviors the customers always exhibit. They include, but are not limited to: Customers travel in packs - the store is either packed or empty; Customers never think to grab smaller bills when spending only a dollar or two; Customers will always behave one of two ways when making a return without the receipt; an old lady in a line of  dozen people will write a check and won't have a pen unless she's a germophobe (not actually a word, but you get what I mean0; and if there are two dozen of an item on the shelf and one of them doesn't have a barcode or some other marking to use to ring it up, that ONE mark-less item is the one the customer will bring up to the register.

The customer will then rattle off the price "they think it was," like we can do something with that. Again, there's a stock system. Unless you're at 7-11 or in a gas station snack stop. But you're not, or I wouldn't be bitching at you. We need more than the price. Sorry. And I get that we should make an effort to ensure the barcode or SKU or DPCI is on the item, but things slip through the cracks. If you're not gonna double-check, don't get mad at me that I need someone to check for us. It's not like it's my fault the item isn't marked.

Worse than this, however, and closer to the Rule that this entry is about is when something IS marked, but doesn't ring up properly. See, because 99 out of 100 customers will see this and make the single stupidest comment a customer can make:

"Oh, must be free then. Hahaha."

I'm to a point now when I hear that, I wanna lunge across my counter and beat the person. I feel okay with this impulse, because old ladies and children are the ones who don't say it, and they're the ones I feel bad about wanting to punch.

Anyway. The item is never free. Don't jokingly suggest it is. Don't assume it is. And don't assume we're ripping you off just because we scan something the sign says is free. Like you read the fucking signs, anyway. You ever see Clerks? Kevin Smith movie, for the pop-culture retarded? It's about the most accurate representation of both sides of the counter ever presented. We're not dumb, we're just not motivated. But believe me, you are probably not any better, Average Desk Jockey.