customer service at its finest

I was a little cranky this Saturday when I went to World Market to buy a dresser for the nursery. Perhaps the crankiness stemmed from my OB telling me "Whoa fattie, slow down on the eating!" although in a much nicer way. Maybe it was because Saturday morning I went to a baby fair where it was humid, sticky, and crowded. Or perhaps I'm just a cranky bitch. Either way, I was cranky on Saturday afternoon and not in a mood to be screwed with, but apparently World Market did not get this memo.

I went into the store knowing exactly what dresser I wanted. I grabbed the SKU off of it and proceeded to the register where the overly excited 13 year old cashier was ready to attempt to ring me up. The first problem was that I tried to pay with a check. Now I understand people don't use checks that frequently anymore, but I wanted to pay from a specific account that I don't have a debt card for, so check it had to be. The 13 year old actually asked me, while pointing at the check, "What is that?" Of course he had no idea how to process a check and had to call the manager over.

Once the manager came over and explained about writing down my birthday and other very vital info, she showed the kid how to run the check through their scanner, which rejected my check. Because why not make this a real learning experience? The manager then had to teach the kid how to call a check in and meanwhile the line behind me grew longer and angrier. It was really becoming a party for everyone in the store.

After spending a few minutes on the phone the manager turns to me with a look of frustration in her eyes. "Uh, I don't really know why but your check isn't going through. Did you think you had enough money in your account to cover this?" Really, that's what you're going to say to me after my check declines? You couldn't come up with something more embarrassing or rude? I tried to explain that I know I have enough money to cover the check, but what good is my explaining this going to do? The manager asked if I had another way to pay and while I did, it wasn't how I wanted to pay and I saw no reason to change my plans at this point. Plus I thought it made me look a little shifty to pull out a credit card at this point. "Hi, I don't have the cash for this and obviously I've got some kind of bad credit since my check is declining so let me pay with plastic!"

The manager offered to put the dresser on hold for 48 hours for me and gave me the phone number for the check scan service saying "Good luck getting to the bottom of this!" Thanks lady. Also, I'm fairly certain she thought she would never see me again, especially not to buy the dresser since it was obvious that I'm broke and scamming World Market out of a dresser with my bad check writing skills.

I wasn't even out the door when I called the check service. Turns out my check was declined for no reason at all. Seriously, that's what they told me "We see that you have a clear check writing history and that there are enough funds to cover the check, but occasionally we stop a check to protect the consumer." Because there is nothing a consumer likes more than being publicly humiliated by having a check decline in front of a crowd of people. Fun!

I then headed on over to my bank to make a withdrawal to pay for the dresser, because dammit the day would not end until I was the proud owner of a new dresser. I approached a teller and when he asked me "Do you want this in big bills?" I replied "No, I want it in singles please. I have to go make it rain this evening." The teller gave me a bit of a strange look and then, thankfully, laughed.

I headed back to World Market, where the manager was still at the register helping my 13 year old cashier friend with another customer. Now I know this is wrong, but when I got to the front of the line I took great pleasure in dropping that wad of singles in front of the very bewildered cashier knowing he would have to count all of them out and that once he got to 20 he would probably get flustered and mess up. I wanted to apologize to the people in line behind me because yes, it was rather bitchy to make this purchase this way, but come on, I deserved some revenge.

The whole thing played out wonderfully. The kid had to count the stack of bills three times before he got the amount right and then he had to get the manager over to recount it. The manger was overly pissy about having to recount the money and even seemed a little pissy about having to fill out the paperwork to complete the sale. I know it wasn't technically her fault the check declined and I also know if I were really wanting to be a bitch I would have taken my business to another World Market, but I'm lazy and this revenge was more my speed. Actually my true speed would have been to pay in pennies, but jparks wasn't with me and there was no way I was going to drag that much weight around just to make a point.

In related news, I have the first piece of furniture for the nursery. Yay!