Complementary means FREE, as in you do not pay for it

Had a customer come in early one morning. He paid for his car wash and whatever else and walked away. Then he came back and we had this discussion:‎

"I'd like to pay for my coffee."

"The coffee is complimentary sir."

"I want to pay for it!"

"But we offer that for free to our customers sir."


It was all I could to keep myself from saying, "I'm far too tired for this today. Drink the freaking FREE coffee and go away. KThxBy."




A friend suggested next time I charge him $3 and take it as a tip for dealing with crazy people. I can admit it's tempting.

I bought it just last month and other common lies...

Today a sweet customer came in. She had a problem with an item she had purchased. Our return policy states returns must be made within 10 days, with original receipt and the items should have the tags still attached. Pretty normal stuff, except many places give longer than 10 days... say 30? Or if you're Target you give 90 days.

 Customer insisted she made her purchase last month. She knew it was last month because she bought it for a friends Anniversary. Ok. No receipt. No tags or tickets on the item. We looked. And looked. And looked. We didn't have a duplicate item in our store. The item did look somewhat familiar to me but I had no idea what the price was so even if we were going to issue a refund - how much do we give?

 After quite some time of searching in the computer I found it. She had purchased the item in question on 3/29/11. Yeah.... not last month. Not even 90 days ago. We're talking 5.5 months she's had this item. That's like... a lot longer than our typical 10 days policy. That's.... that's a long dang time. I'm not sure who would refund you at that point except Costco and we certainly aren't Costco. We're a small independent business. We want to believe you. We don't want you to end up with a defective product. We don't want you to waste your money. However when you insist you made your purchase "just last month" and we can prove you made it 5.5 months ago... how much do you honestly expect us to believe? Really?!

Moral of the story... keep your receipts and for heaven's sake don't try to return stuff you bought 5 months ago. If it doesn't work or isn't right take it back ASAP for everyone' sake and KEEP THE TAGS/TICKETS!

Thank you.

What does Christmas smell like to you?

Today a customer came in and immediately said, "It smells like Christmas in here!" Everyone says it smells so good in the gift shop and for whatever reason I can't smell it. Maybe I'm just too used to it? I don't know. They must be smelling a combo of the candles and air fresheners for the car. I wonder what Christmas smells like to him.

I think most people's smell of Christmas is at least partly the "tree" smell... for me it doesn't include any tree type of scent because I'm allergic. And yes, that sucks. Christmas to me smells like cinnamon, cookies, apples and nutmeg.

Ya gotta respect the money... right?

It was hot today. I mean, for us, it was hot today. Our days are generally in the mid 60's so "hot" is relative for sure. Rumor has it the temps were up to 91 F in places. Needless to say I sold a lot of water and other beverages today. One sweet older lady came up and bought a 1.5 liter bottle of Aquafina. I told her that would be $1.65. She proceeded to put down one dollar and then sort through her coins. Somewhere along the lines she had been given a .10¢ Canadian coin. She didn't realize that's what it was and I let her know. The look on her face was of such disgust... not with me, mind you, but with the coin. It was hard for me not to laugh. She told me, "Throw it away! It's worthless!"

I didn't toss the coin. Ya gotta respect the money, right? Even if it isn't the currency of our country. I saved the offending coin.