Excellent Customer Service Part 1

My tragic flaw is honesty. I'm way too honest for my own good. If my life were a Greek tragedy, my honesty would lead to death and destruction. Fortunately, my life is not a Greek tragedy. Unfortunately, my honesty leaves me with headaches and the desire to punch people in the face.

Two summers ago, I believe it was, a woman brought just about every sea horse item we had in the store up to the counter. Her daughter loved sea horses. One of the items she had was a wind chime that the tag had fallen off of. She asked how much it was and I looked it up and told her it was $22. She seemed content with this. I then noticed that the string that hangs down the middle with a little marble on the end was missing. I told her this. The computer says we have three so I'm sure there's one that's not broken. She says this was the only one out there. Maybe the rest are still in boxes. I send someone to look in the stock room. I finish ringing everything else up and we're still waiting for word on another wind chime. We wait a bit longer. It really could not have been that long. A few minutes tops.

"As a customer, how long am I supposed to wait? I'm just asking." She says.

Oh, were you just asking? Is that what a question is? Please enlighten me some more.

"Well, if you don't want to wait, I can sell you this wind chime for $15," I reply.

Now, she did not even notice it was broken, if you can really even call it broken. Sure the wind chime is missing a string with a marble but it actually looks better this way. Most people would jump for joy about getting $7 off, but she's not most people.

"How did you come up with that price? I'm just asking. It seems like, since it's broken, it should be 50% off."

How did I come up with that price? Well, you see, I take the retail price and then subtract the cost and add in the shipping and figure the worth of the sea horse and each chime and the string with the marble and then I multiply this figure by pi...

I made it up. It seemed like a nice amount. Actually, it seemed like an overly generous offer.

I try to explain this, but she stands firm. 50% off she demands. Well, I want to make her happy because the customer should always be happy [Note: The customer is not always right. The customer is usually wrong, but they should be wrong and happy.] So I finally crack and give it to her for 50% off. At this point, I wanted her out of my store. She was a rude customer in the nicest way possible. She leaves and I look back by the wind chime section where there are two sea horse wind chimes both broken, I mean improved, in the same way. Thanks for wasting our time and making it seem like we were wasting your time.

I wish I had kept my mouth shut.