"I don't care"

That's what a customer said to me today. "I don't care." What didn't she care about? That I was helping another customer!

Here's how it happened. This lady, we'll call her Ruby (first name that popped in my head. No offense to any Ruby's out there), comes in and shops around. She selects several pairs of pants. I started a room for her and continued to add things to her room. By the time she was done, she must have at least 25 items in her room. I checked on her a few times and took things that she didn't need. I was also helping another customer at the same time. My other customer finished first and I was ringing her up and opening a charge. Ruby tells me she needs another size in a certain pant. I tell her that I will be with her in a moment. While she is in the fitting room and I am at the register, she calls out that she needs help. I tell her we will be right with her. When I finish up with my customer, I go in and she tells me that she has been waiting. I explain and apologize, saying that I was with another customer. That's when she tells me quite angrily that she did not care. She was waiting. So, I go and check for the pant she needed, which I didn't have. I take everything out of her room. She puts about four or five pairs on the counter. Tries on about five more pairs.

THEN when I ring her up, after I already scanned everything, she produces a birthday discount card. I have to go back and manually change each item. When I tell her that her purchase must be made on her charge card, she says she's done this before and they never said it had to be on her charge card. My manager, sensing Ruby's rudeness, steps in and says it says so on the discount card that her charge must be present. We try to look up her charge, but no account is coming up. I call customer service for them to look it up. The customer service guy I got sounded very cute over the phone. Because of Ruby's unusual last name, I couldn't just say it, so I had to spell it to Matt (the customer service guy). Even Matt said it shouldn't be hard to look up her account because her last name was such an unique name. He couldn't find the account and we doubt she even had one. How she got her hands on a birthday discount is beyond me. Ruby changes her mind about using her birthday discount, so I had to go back and manually change everything again. She notices a new pair of denim jeans and asks me where they are. I have to go into the stock room and bring her out two pairs, one in petite and one in regular. She tries them both on and another pant, adding only one more to her purchase. Good grief.

Also, another customer came in and I mentioned to her the discount we were offering to our customers. She replied, "is that all?" I said, "It's better than nothing." She went to the front of our store, where we had another sales associate. The other associate mentions the discount and she didn't make a comment about it to her like she did to me. Then we had another customer come in, who had also come in the previous two days. She was looking for a sweater in size medium and not having any luck. Not only was she not having any luck, but she was leaving behind a trail of destruction as well!