Today's Customer from Hell is an Ethics Question

[jmowreader]

PCS=Permanent Change of Station. Army term for moving.
DITY move=renting a truck and moving your own stuff instead of allowing the army to hire a moving company. The advantage to the soldier is that the army will pay you the difference between van line tariff and your expenses--in Cash!

A full pallet of concrete weighs 4500 pounds. It's helpful to know this before I start in on this guy.

A customer came in with a big U-haul truck and asked for three pallets of concrete "but I'm not going to keep them very long."

Huh? Why would you buy concrete and not keep it very long?

Said the customer, "I'm getting ready to PCS and am doing a DITY move. They pay for you to move by weight, so what I'm gonna do is buy three pallets of concrete, put them in the moving truck, load all my stuff into the truck, get it weighed then return the concrete because I won't need it anymore."

Now! After picking your ass up off the floor, would you:

a) Sell the customer the concrete. After all, what business is it of yours what they do with it after they leave?

b) Refuse to sell the customer the concrete; accessory to an attempt to defraud the United States Government carries penalties a little bit on the stiff side, and federal penitentiaries don't let you post to DU or keep cats in your cell.

c) Detain the customer, call the Military Police and tell them what you just learned.

I chose B. I told the guy I wasn't going to sell him any concrete. I told him why I wasn't going to sell him any concrete--helping customers commit fraud isn't part of my job. And I told him we didn't have anything else he wanted.

Naturally, the guy wanted to see the manager. The manager escorted him to the door. It was sweet.

[Richardo]

1. Very sweet! Thanks for saving some of our tax dollars

That scumbag. (But I support our troops!)

[Bolo Boffin]

2. B - because the customer admitted to buying only to return

Why should your store put up with the hassle?

[gmoney]

3. sell it to him, but mark "no returns" on the receipt...

let him actually MOVE the stuff around all over the place trying to find somewhere to return it.

"I'm sorry sir, but if you state an intention to return an item, we can not sell you the item. We are not a rental house. I support our troops, but I don't support fraud."

[jmowreader]

11. Not a rental house? You've never worked in one of these places!

We have had a tool rental department for a couple of years now. Before then, there were a few items we only "rented." And we didn't feel one pang of guilt about it at all.

Example: the crimpers for QESTPEX pipe. This pipe is the replacement for the old black polybutylene pipe that dissolves the fittings five years after you installed it, and that everyone and his mother sued over. (I'm not shitting ya--there was some weird chemical reaction between the plastic in the pipe and the metal in the fittings that caused the fittings to corrode.) PEX pipe is made from polyethylene and it's a good product. Anyway, the real beauties of PEX are that it's really flexible so you don't have to screw with a lot of elbows and fiddling like you do with PVC or iron, and it's super quick to hook up--slip a metal sleeve around the outside of the pipe, stick a barbed fitting into the pipe, pull the sleeve down to 3/8" from the end of the pipe, and crimp it. You must have the crimpers to do a PEX job, they cost a hundred bucks, and they won't do anything else. Worse: if you are doing a run with half-inch segments and three-quarter-inch segments, you need two different crimpers. If you're plumbing your own house with PEX, you'd have to buy the crimpers, crimp your job with them and try to figure out something to do with them. No pawn shop in town will take a pair--they've all got seven or eight pairs already. Every plumber in town already has a pair, and as I said earlier this is the most specialized tool in the world--hell, even a left-handed monkey wrench can be used for three things. So what we'd tell people is to buy the crimpers, save the receipt, do the job and return them for a full refund. This they did. Now we rent crimpers for $3 per four-hour period. If you set up all the joints before you get the crimpers you can knock out an entire house in an hour if you take your time.

However, I don't know of ANYONE who rents concrete.

[davidinalameda]

4. I would have dropped a dime on this guy so fast

it would have made his head spin

and you know that someone sold him the cement

[Gogi]

5. Good for you!

And your manager for backing you up. You both performed an act of patriotism.:patriot:

[SOteric]

6. Thank you.

You do realise, of course, that those are the same taxpayer dollars we all shovel into the system hoping to see roads, schools, care for the elderly and disabled and a well-provided and cared for military...?

Sure, I knew you did.

It's not some anonymous entity called 'government' that man wanted to defraud. It's you and your neighbours.

[jmowreader]

10. Yeah, tell me about it

Now let me tell you about the drunk-off-his-ass customer I had to deal with on Saturday afternoon. It was a black guy who was probably 70 years old...this is important here. He came in with a laundry list of stuff for his "precious baby granddaughter who's going to college for the very first time." When I told him we had none of the items, he called me a racist who just wanted to keep his precious baby granddaughter down.

I don't remember the whole list--there was a shitload of stuff on it--but some of the things that stood out:

* Laptop computer
* Bicycle rims
* Computer desk
* Bath towels, washcloths and hand towels
* Boombox

I mean, this fucker wanted probably thirty things we NEVER carry. (Bath towels in a hardware store? Apparently he saw the towel bars and decided we had the towels too.) I even took the time to copy his list to another sheet of paper and write down places that had the stuff he wanted. I even drew him a map of the Fayetteville retail area. But nope! He wanted to buy a laptop for his precious baby granddaughter, he wanted it from us and by damn we were gonna pull him one out. (And I have NO idea where he came up with the idea we'd have laptops. Bicycle rims maybe--we've got bicycle hooks, so obviously we've got the rest of the bike. But laptops?)

This one I gave to the loss prevention guy, who gently escorted him to the door.

I kinda hope we get sued over this one. That would be a FUN day in court, man.

[Bunny]

12. Laptops? At Home Depot?

I think that's where you work, right? What in God's name would make someone think you carried laptops?

[jmowreader]

13. What would make someone think we carried bicycle parts?

Yes, I work at Home Depot.

No, we don't carry laptops.

And no, we don't plan to either. Our hardlines don't have "best if used by" dates on them like laptops do.

Fuck, man, I have no idea why someone would think we had laptops. A few of us were sitting there thinking of reasons why he MIGHT think we had laptops. The closest any of us got to it was the Leviton Media Center. This is kinda slick. It's a steel box. You cut it into your wall like a breaker panel, then send all your telephone, cablevision/satellite, stereo, computer, whatever you have signals through it. It's kind of a patch bay for your home. But it doesn't look like a laptop.

Our regional install manager has a ThinkPad the company gave him, but he doesn't come to Fayetteville on Saturdays so he couldn't have seen it and thought we were getting into laptops.

One of our regulars brings his laptop with him, but I hope to hell that the guy didn't see someone using a laptop in the store and think we were selling it to him.

I think the real reason for him going off was that he was just so fucking drunk you could smell him from across the room ("room" meaning the whole 300' x 1000' salesfloor) and pissed off that his wife was making him spend this much money, and he flipped out when Yankee-white-boy me told him he wasted a trip. But I'll never know why he thought to shop for that list in my establishment.

[BartInPC]

7. As a former squid...

I did a couple of DITY moves while in active service. I heard of other guys who tried pulling something similar to what this guy was trying. The brazen manner in which he approached you to openly defraud the government would have pushed me from B to C. Glad you weren't willing to assist him in this manner.

[kodi]

8. a republican would have split the profit.

.

[Warpy]

9. I'm glad the manager backed you up

because, ethically speaking, B was the correct choice. It was also the choice to make in the name of economy.

After all, it costs the company to make a sale, load the concrete, stay open for the few hours the concrete is with the customer, unload the concrete, and write up the return slip.

C was the incorrect choice because it would have made you an accessory to fraud, even if you blew the whistle on him.

A was the Repuglican choice.

[RPM]

14. not really - I don't think he'd be an accessory

He would lack the requisite intent to defraud the government if he sold the man the concrete but intended to drop the dime on him? Right?

[RPM]

15. btw - you need to turn these stories into a book

they are awesome - i cry from laughing too hard each time you post these stories. They are pure gold.