Do you correct the cashier when he makes a mistake in your favor?<\/p>\n
My father enjoyed petty theft.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember seeing him carrying his ski boots with this bungee-cord contraption, and when I asked him where he got it, he said "I liberated it from Wendy’s!", the ski shop in Manchester, Vermont where he’d dropped untold thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n
And I can’t say I was that far off the mark.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember changing the price on a doormat at the five and dime in Burlington during college.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, I thought that would be cool, to have one of those plastic doormats at the entrance of my dorm room.\u00c2\u00a0 The sticker said 79 cents, but I exchanged it for one on a cheaper model, that said 45 cents.\u00c2\u00a0 The cashier was none the wiser.<\/p>\n
But then when I was in law school, in a big department store buying a robe with my girlfriend, I was caught by the cashier, this was a twenty dollar robe, not a sixteen buck one like the box said.<\/p>\n
I played dumb, but my girlfriend didn’t believe it.\u00c2\u00a0 She was not conspiratorial, she was incredulous.\u00c2\u00a0 Had I changed the price?<\/p>\n
Well, the robe was box-less, and I inserted it in this empty box…<\/p>\n
After that I gave up bending the rules.<\/p>\n
Oh, the big bad man who owned the department store was making millions, I was a struggling student.\u00c2\u00a0 But the disapproval of my girlfriend, that was too much.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I was sworn into the California Bar, I gave up petty theft for good.\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, I don’t even remember walking into another theatre in the multiplex after that, even though I’d been known to see three movies on a good day.\u00c2\u00a0 "Theft of Services", that’s what they called it.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t want to get busted.<\/p>\n
But what if the store fucked up?\u00c2\u00a0 What if it wasn’t my fault?<\/p>\n
I bought a pair of hiking boots at A16.\u00c2\u00a0 They were having a Memorial Day sale, the boots were one third off, they were $120.<\/p>\n
Good deal, except they were a little snug in the forefoot.<\/p>\n
But the wider ones, they were TWO HUNDRED BUCKS!\u00c2\u00a0 For day hikers?\u00c2\u00a0 That would last eighteen months at most?<\/p>\n
The salesman assured me the $120 ones would break in just fine.<\/p>\n
But when I told the story to Felice, she rolled her eyes.\u00c2\u00a0 She felt that fit was foremost.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, money’s not her issue.<\/p>\n
I waited for my emotions to calm down.\u00c2\u00a0 I waited until I returned from the east coast.\u00c2\u00a0 And then I tried on the hiking boots in the privacy of my own home.\u00c2\u00a0 They WERE too tight in the forefoot.\u00c2\u00a0 And pondering hours of hiking in discomfort, I resolved to return to A16 and exchange them.\u00c2\u00a0 Which I did today.<\/p>\n
But when I got up to the counter, the cashier told me I owed $20 and change.\u00c2\u00a0 This wasn’t right.\u00c2\u00a0 Shouldn’t the difference be $80 AND CHANGE?<\/p>\n
The dude was a doofus, he was clueless.<\/p>\n
And the store, it’s vast.\u00c2\u00a0 But it was empty.\u00c2\u00a0 SOMEBODY was carrying all that inventory.<\/p>\n
I told him I didn’t think he was right.<\/p>\n
He thought he was.\u00c2\u00a0 But then, after doing a bit more study, he saw that I had purchased the first pair on sale, and that the difference wasn’t between the two retail prices, but the one sale price and the full price of the second pair of boots.<\/p>\n
He called over his superior, she reset the cash register, and the dude processed my eighty dollar plus bill.<\/p>\n
I was flummoxed.\u00c2\u00a0 I just lost a gig worth a ton of money.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, not the entire gig, but 5\/6ths of it.\u00c2\u00a0 The difference in price was significant.\u00c2\u00a0 And this dude, he didn’t even THANK ME!<\/p>\n
But I knew if I’d walked out of the store, the tell-tale heart would get me.\u00c2\u00a0 I wouldn’t be able to get my "deal" out of my head.\u00c2\u00a0 If I slipped and fell on the trail, I’d blame it on bad karma.<\/p>\n
So I’m comfortable in my choice.\u00c2\u00a0 But I feel a little bit like a wimp.\u00c2\u00a0 It was their ignorance, this guy never would have paid a price.\u00c2\u00a0 I paid the price.\u00c2\u00a0 And what were they losing, their profit?\u00c2\u00a0 Through stupidity?<\/p>\n
What would YOU do?<\/p>\n
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Do you correct the cashier when he makes a mistake in your favor? My father enjoyed petty theft.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember seeing him carrying his ski boots with this bungee-cord contraption, and when I asked him where he got it, he said "I liberated it from Wendy’s!", the ski shop in Manchester, Vermont where he’d dropped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-di","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}