Imagine going to a furniture store where there is furniture on display. You can see it, touch it and even sit on it.

Would you prefer to buy the display model of the furniture, or would you rather buy it boxed up and brand new?

In this story, one couple wants to buy the display model of a particular nightstand, but an employee tells them that’s not possible. That’s far from the end of the story.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

No, we can’t sell the display

At my store, we have an okay sized furniture section with chairs, couches, table sets, etc. and we always get people who ask if we can sell them the display.

Normally, we’re not allowed to because then we’d have to pay someone to build new ones(or have the cashiers do it in their downtime) unless we’re for sure not getting any more of that item and we need to get rid of the display.

I’m not sure how it works for other stores, but I’d love to hear about other policies.

This customer interaction seems normal enough.

Anyway, to the story.

I had this couple ask me if they could buy this nightstand display.

I explained to them what I explained above and they seemed to be pretty understanding. Gave them a pull tag and told them to bring it up to the cashiers and we would pull it from the back room and load it in their vehicle for them.

Afterwards, I went back to work.

Did the couple not understand?

About an hour later, after finishing up helping with the overwhelming amount of customers that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere and who comes up but the couple looking at the nightstand in Furniture.

Except the nightstand isn’t in Furniture anymore. It’s in their cart.

Oh boy, here we go.

I put my scanner belt back on and mosey on over to the register they’ve gone through.

The couple lied.

The junior cashier there turns to me and tells me that the employee in Furniture told them they could buy the Nightstand display(might I add that they had placed a lamp on top of the nightstand to see what it was like earlier, and it was still there).

I chuckled, told him that I was the one that told them they couldn’t buy it.

I confront them and they play the old “Oh I guess we misheard you” bit and I roll my eyes (in my mind) and reiterate that they can either buy one in the box or go without since we can’t sell the floor model.

They shrug their shoulders and just leave.

The couple went to a lot of effort to get the nightstand!

A bit later, I’m BSing with my manager on my way to break and he’s rolling the nightstand back to Furniture and puts it back on the shelf.

Something I didn’t notice earlier, but we have small items like nightstands, endtables, or tv stands on a vertical shelf, long wires wrapped around them to keep them from falling. He notes that it was on the top shelf.

So, this couple not only untied the item from the shelf, but brought it down and attempted to buy it. I figure the wire tying it down would have been an indication that it wasn’t for sale.

I’m sure if they’d hurt themselves bringing it down, they would have made a stink.

Why did they want the floor model so much? Wouldn’t it be better to get a new one?

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Here’s a story about a bakery.

Sometimes stores give away the display models.

This makes sense.

No haggling is a good idea.

This store takes a completely different approach!

Customers really need to work on following directions.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.