Dishonesty

About 3 weeks ago, a woman came into the store, looking for pillows. We had on hand the ones she wanted - two soft standard down pillows. She also wanted pillow protectors - cases that zip tight around the pillows, inside the shams, and protect the down from sweat, hair oil, drool, blood, etc. We did not have two standard pillow protectors on hand, but I said I would order some for her. She agreed, and paid for her pillows, and before she had even left the store, I had placed the order.

The customer called a few days later, asking where her pillow protectors were. I had said it would take about 5 business days to get them (they were showing as available in the warehouse), so she was impatient. When they hadn't arrived after yet another week, and the customer was getting snippy, I fired off an e-mail to our retail support person, asking what was up. Well, the warehouse inventory listing I had seen was inaccurate, and there were none, and the ETA on a new order from France was weeks away. I asked him to pull some from another store to satisfy my by now justifiably miffed customer, and he did so.

The pillow protectors arrived early in the week; the customer was informed, and came in to pick them up on Saturday. Here's where the dishonesty comes into play.

She said she'd already paid for them. She hadn't, of course; we NEVER take money for things that do not leave in the customer's hand. We never, never pre-sell merchandise, having learned the very hard way, many years ago, what a rotten idea that is. She had paid for the two down pillows, but not the pillow protectors.

But.... she insisted that she had paid for them. There was no documentation to prove otherwise, and so this dishonest (thieving) woman got away with them without paying, and I was left a stern, admonishing note from my manager, reminding me to always indicate whether or not an order has been paid for...even though she and I both know we never take pre-payment.

What has this taught me? It has taught me to never trust a customer. It has taught me to assume the customer is going to try to cheat. Did the customer think about this, and would she have cared, if the thought had crossed her selfish mind? Would someone who would be so petty as to outright steal two pillow protectors, lying to my manager's face in the process, give a damn about how her own dishonesty would erode my faith in humanity? Would she stop to consider how her action tarnishes the reputation of every other customer who sets foot in the building? 

If she had really been interested in getting some pillow protectors posthaste, she could have gone to any number of stores or websites and ordered them, for far less than ours cost. But maybe she was ticked off because it took so long to get them, and thought a little payback was in order, and by prevaricating about having paid for them, she got them for free - sort of flipping us off for having made her wait. Isn't that juvenile?

Well, I just trust that karma will come down on her for her dishonesty. I have to hope for some cosmic settling of the books, because if I didn't, and believed that the bad guys always get away with it, and the good guys always get the shaft, then I would be a very unhappy person indeed. I don't want to be an unhappy person. So I have to believe that someday, sooner or later, she'll get hit right in the noggin with the result of her own dishonesty.