The day I snapped at a lady over a $3.00 coupon still haunts me

I worked the register at a grocery store in Tulsa about 4 years ago and I had this one customer who came through my line with a cart full of stuff and a coupon book thicker than a bible. She wanted to combine three expired coupons on one item and I told her no, she got loud, called me a liar, and I just lost it. I told her fine, take the $3.00 off, I don't care, just leave. She complained to the manager and I got written up, but the real kicker came later when my coworker pointed out that if I had just scanned a loyalty card first, the system would have taken all three automatically. I had been fighting with people over coupon rules for 6 months straight and the whole time I was making it harder than it needed to be because I never bothered to learn the actual system workaround. Has anyone else had that moment where you realize you were the one creating the nightmare all along?

2 comments

2 Comments

paulw878d ago

Man, that's a rough one. But I gotta ask, did you ever actually go back and learn the system after that, or did you just keep doing the same thing and feel bad about it later? Because it sounds like you had a real chance to fix the problem and save yourself a ton of headaches. It's one thing to realize you were the problem, but another to actually do something about it. Were you just too stubborn or embarrassed to learn the workaround?

reesemiller8d ago

Yeah, "too stubborn or embarrassed" is probably the real answer for a lot of folks in these stories. But honestly, is it really that deep? It's just a job system, not a moral failing.