“Last week, a young girl came into my store alone. Since I work in luxury retail, typically when I see teeny-boppers or even young adults walk in, I know they’re usually just going to waste my time or just do a quick walk in and walk out, so this is what I was expecting.
The young girl was getting ready to graduate high school and wanted a pair of shoes to wear to walk across the stage. She found a few pairs of heels she liked, had me running back and forth for about twenty minutes because she needed different sizes, wanted different colors, etc. She finally settled on a pair of shoes and spent about half an hour walking around the store in them, making sure she liked the height, could walk properly, etc. She took probably thirty or so pictures of herself in these shoes, then took them off and told me:
‘I need to go get my mom’s opinion.’
I cleaned up the mess of shoes she made and about twenty minutes later she comes back and decides to buy the heels. She pays with two credit cards, a fist full of cash, and asks me about the return policy. I tell her she has thirty days to return them as long as they’re completely unused and not worn. That was on Friday night.
Flash forward to Monday: I come back from my lunch break and see one of my managers doing a return for two women for a pair of heels. I go over to investigate and find out that just as I suspected, the girl who I just sold these heels to had sent her mother and grandmother back to my store to return them, and they were completely worn, as the sole and heel were dirty.
I tell my manager over the walkie to not accept the return because they were worn, but the girl’s mother was putting up a fight, and so they were issued a full refund. Four hundred dollars. Four hundred freaking dollars that goes back on me and messes up my sales. The worst part is, now we obviously can’t sell the shoes since they were worn and can only damage them out.
Funny thing is, I knew she was going to do this. Most likely, she wanted a nice pair of designer shoes so she could show off to her buddies and post pictures of herself wearing them on social media and for graduation photos, but couldn’t afford to keep them. I was furious my manager accepted the return too. It ruined my day.”
