Sometimes customers are so stupid that they think retail employees are stupider than they are.

What would you do if a customer claimed an item was on sale that wasn’t on sale? Would you give her the sale price just to make her happy, or would you stick to what you know is the truth?

In today’s story, one employee knows the item the customer wants to buy is not on sale, but the customer is very determined to get the item at a steep discount.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

“Ma’am I can’t complete this sale, as it would be theft.”

Football season had JUST started at my store, so we were putting out flags for our college football team. So no item that has the logo on it would be on clearance (this is important later).

We are also a register in an obscure part of the store less than 10ft from an exit. We have a security door and have to press a button to let people out but we still need to be on guard.

Enter a woman at our register (C) and a coworker (CW) and myself (M).

Something seemed fishy.

M: Can i check you out for today?

C: Yessir. Everything super busy?

M: Yes ma’am. Store is moving quick to get ready for tailgate season.

I get to this 10ft (~3m) tall knife flag. And it has a clearance sticker on it. Thinking that it can’t be right i look at the sticker and scan it.

That sticker did not belong on that item.

It rings up as a beach towel.

I quickly void the item and peel the sticker off (which was loose) and put it on my desk. And then ring up the correct barcode.

C: That’s supposed to be 15 dollars.

M: Ma’am that price would be for the label that’s right here. (Shows her the clearance label) And the item its listed for is a beach towel. You can see the item name on that label. This is a knife flag we just put on the shelves a few days ago. It couldn’t be on clearance.

The customer insists the flag is on sale.

C: But it’s on sale.

M: The knife flag is not ma’am. The beach towel that this label belongs to, is. There is nothing I can do except ring you up at this price (64 dollars) for the flag.

C: ITS ON SALE. SELL IT TO ME FOR 15 DOLLARS.

CW (walking up): What seems to be the problem?

He clued in the manager on the issue.

M (discreetly): This woman is trying to purchase this item with a label for a different item from the clearance section.

CW: Ma’am this label is for an entirely separate item. We cant sell it to you at this price.

So she rants and raves.

We give her the knife flag back, she also snatched the label which i SHOULD have thrown away) and goes toward the garden center register (about half the time customers that do the garden/automotive register dance are usually up to no good to begin with).

She really wanted that flag for $15!

I call LP and have them follow her.

She does the same thing at the garden center register (she reapplied the label) and said it was on sale.

They denied it, so she left the flag there, and left the store with haste.

I was correct in my standing as the flag was NOT on clearance and she tried it on the electronics register before mine.

People think we are so stupid.

There comes a point where if you want something badly enough you should just buy it whether it’s on sale or not, but that woman was trying to scam them.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

The customer knew what she was doing.

This person had a similar experience.

Here’s another similar experience.

This doesn’t sound like the best store policy.

At what point do you ban her from the store?

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.