5/20: The Customer Is Always Screwed
10 a.m.
I’m not ragging on Scroby here – lord knows I have my share of low-paying job stories – it’s just his tale of a video game store boss taking advantage of customers made me chuckle.
He would do shady things all the time and would tell customers the wrong information when it came to certain products. One example I called him out on in front of a customer was this. I was talking to a customer about pre-ordering a Xbox 360. Myself and this customer were having a pretty lengthly conversation about it because he just wasn't sure if he would want one about it and out of the blue, my new manager (at the time) walks over and says "yeah Halo 3 will come out when the PS3 comes out!" It was his way of "trying to help me get the pre-order."
It’s funny to think what constitutes taking advantage of a client depending on your line of work. The reason I mention this is that my one idiot boss always fucks over our customers – Scroby's post brought to mind of a situation earlier this year was when the idiot tried to get someone to convert to a different annuity so we could extend that person’s surrender charge. Problem was, that annuity didn’t best serve her. She’s older and the annuity that she was in was a better deal for her, so when my co-worker (who is in charge of financial services in name only) stumbled upon the paperwork for this annuity plan transfer, he immediately contacted this person and got her to keep her current annuity plan. This account was well into five figures and she would have been screwed out of at least $500 per year while having to keep her money with us for another six years in order to avoid early withdrawal penalties if she would have went with the idiot's plan, which could have been illegal because it's likely he didn't tell the customer, among other things, about the extended surrender charge, which is a very big "no-no."
9:30 a.m.
• I might not be going the route you may think I’m going with this one.
Kristina Schneider tried to persuade a customer at the BP station where she works to buy the last ticket on a roll of the Magnificent Millions lottery game.
"I always joke that the last ticket is the winning one, but he said he only had enough money for three tickets," Schneider said.
This time, her advice was no joke.
The single mother—with nine maxed out credit cards and $8,500 in debt for her associate's degree—bought what turned out to be a $1 million winning ticket with a $10 bill she found in the store Friday.
"I thought someone was playing a trick on me" when she found the sawbuck, she said.
After showing a customer that she did indeed have a winning ticket, she locked the store while she took a moment to be sick in the bathroom.
"I was numb. I still am," she said.
Schneider, 32, opted to take 20 yearly payments of $50,000, or $34,500 after taxes.
"If I'd have taken a lump sum, I'd be broke again within five years," she said.
No, I don't have a Quickie Mart story of my own that's similar. In fact, I tried to minimize my chatting with Lottery People. I didn't give a shit if there was one scratch-off ticket left on a roll or if a new roll was on display. This is what popped in my head upon reading this story: A Quickie Mart-employed single mother with NINE maxed out credit cards plus almost $9,000 in debt for an ASSOCIATE’S DEGREE plays the lottery. (I’m sure this isn’t the first time she’s spent money on government-sanctioned gambling.) Why am I not surprised? I will give her credit. (Well, maybe not “credit” because she’ll max it out within a week – how about “props?) She went with the 20 payments instead of the lump sum, due to her inability to budget money.
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