"Hello, ma'am, how can I help you?"I want to say, "Yeah, well, I don't," or, "Oh yeah? Prove it," but I can't. I invariably have to say, "Sorry, ma'am, company policy," or something like that. Even better would be if I could say, "Would you rather me give you nothing?"
"Yeah, I wanna return this _____ I bought the other day."
"OK, do you have the receipt?"
"Well no."
"OK, well I can only give you the lowest price this item has been in the last 30 days, and I can only give it to you on a gift card."
"But I know I paid $XX.99 for it!"
Listen up, America. When you buy something, you get a receipt. This piece of paper is often the ONLY proof you have that you actually paid money for the item. Nowadays, if you paid with a card, we might be able to check our records if you remember which card you used. A retail store can not be expected to know who paid what for what in every transaction in the last XX days that a store allows returns. In fact, a store that allows any returns without receipts is probably screwing themselves over more than anything. For those of you who don't know, here's why allowing a return without a receipt is a bad idea:
With no proof you purchased the item in question, it's entirely possible you just snatched one from the store, removed all the tags in a fitting room, and brought it to the cashier. Once you've gotten "your money" back in a gift card, as JC Penney does it, you can purchase something else. The company loses money in this situation. Thankfully, there's no way for you to ever actually get cash or any legal tender recognized by anyone other than JC Penney from a return without a receipt, but the point is that the company can lose money.
The thing many people fail to realize about businesses these days is that they are businesses, that is, they are trying to make money. Anyone who doesn't go into a place of business with that bit of information clearly in mind is an idiot. So let's think - does it make sense for a business to take a customer's word for it that they purchased something, without proof? No. The burden of proof ought to be on the customer - at least, that's the way a business can prevent losses.
So why do businesses like JC Penney have policies that can be easily exploited? Because their business is dependent on making people happy, and making people happy often has very little to do with being reasonable. As a "customer service associate" I am trained and told to go to great, often unreasonable lengths to make a customer happy. "It's about the emotional connection," they say, "the experience."
"Who," I want to ask, "would shop with their feelings rather than their minds (which are presumably better at handling money and such things)?" The answer is, apparently, most women and indeed most Americans.
There's a larger point to this than me just ranting about my job. I believe today's retail industry reveals a lot of what's wrong with American society today. Specifically, it reveals that American consumers demand that they put forth minimal effort in getting what they want. 'Why should I put forth effort when they're the ones getting paid to help me?' is how the argument goes. This sort of mentality pervades all of American society - especially in how Americans relate to their government. It's the government's job, they think, to provide for them, to help them.
This is part of why I said in my last entry here that America would need a tyrant for most citizens to support the necessary revolution. Too many still rely on the government to survive, and too many others aren't affected enough for them to take much action. We live in a society where many people expect to be given what they want, rather than having to work for and take what they want. Sure, retail customers still have to pay for their merchandise, and most people still have to pay taxes, but we're losing values like independence and responsibility, purely because they aren't necessary to survive anymore. And as evolution teaches us, those traits which are not useful for survival are less likely to be passed to the next generation.
There is one hope for America, even if the people of this generation decide to rely on the government as they have been. Perhaps not everyone alive now can become responsible for their own survival, perhaps they are already too far gone, but anyone can raise a child with those values. If we teach the next generation to learn from our mistakes, to take rather than demand to be given, then perhaps when the next generation makes it through their education, they will not need the government to survive. Maybe they'll be able to enact the political changes I see as necessary even today. That said, I won't give up on my own generation yet. To assume nothing can be done right now would be to fall into the same trap I've been warning about. But for now, I can't have the above conversation with countless customers and hear anything but the sound of inevitability. I can't help but think... if this is the type of person that is unwittingly a microcosm for all American society, God help us all.
Posts
