We had a Cost + 5% night at work, where the customers in our database from T to Z were invited.
Most customers are alright on these nights or days, but there’s always ONE who doesn’t mind behaving like a dickhead. Unfortunately, I had the dickhead this time.
He started off looking at microwaves; I asked if I could help him and he asked if the prices on the paper bags were the best prices I could do. "Oooh yeah!" I replied, enthusiastically. He headed off to look at the cordless phones, and I spent what felt like half an hour trying to help him choose a phone. He claimed not to have a power point near his phone plug, and asked if there were any cordless phones that didn’t need a power point (is this guy for real?).
Finally, he settles on a particular Panasonic phone. Great. But there’s a catch: He asks if I can do a better price if he buys a microwave as well.
Now, these prices that are ticketed are invoice cost + GST + 5%. The 5% is an extremely narrow profit; we can only do this on these VIP nights because we know we’ll have lots of people come in. Even so, the total profit figures for the night are only about as much as a reasonably-good regular day, plus we’ve got the overheads associated with having extra staff and sending out hundreds of letters. After everything, we don’t make much. But this guy insists that we must do a better deal since he’s buying a cheap phone and a cheap microwave.
I feel like telling him to get lost. Instead, I show him the regular price of the microwave - $349, compared with its VIP price of $258, and explain that this is the same price that I’d have to pay if I wanted to buy the microwave (true). He still keeps pushing for a further discount, before saying "Well, you’ve lost a sale" and walking out.
At this point, I wanted to laugh in his face. "Mate, if I took any more off the microwave or the phone then the shop wouldn’t make any money; so it doesn’t matter if I lose the sale because either way I wouldn’t be making anything; I wouldn’t have lost anything. But YOU would lose the ability to take advantage of these prices, and NOBODY will even get close to the prices I’m offering".
I didn’t say that. I just let him walk out - good riddance. If he never comes back, good: One less person to make my job difficult. He did come back a few minutes later, claiming that his girlfriend called and told him to get the microwave, and he did buy it at $258. But I know that he realised what I had wanted to say to him anyway.
Dickhead.
On the plus side, today we got our new fridge! It’s a beauty, but unfortunately it doesn’t hold as much in the fridge part as our old fridge. However, it has a light, it has glass shelves, it’s upside down, it opens the correct way, it draws less power and it doesn’t require defrosting; so it’s really a step up. I’m amazed that the old Kelvinator had been running for more years than I have been alive, and has never needed a service.
Angelica has gone to Singapore for a week, but when she gets back I really want to see her again. Even if I have to drive to her place just to get half an hour with her, that would be nice.
Hairspray is officially my favourite movie of all time. It has actually dethroned Madchen Madchen ("Girls On Top"), and judging by the number of people I know who loved Hairspray (Connie described it today as "Gold!"), I think it instantly became a classic. It’s a complete reversal - earlier versions were loved by the gay community, and if a straight person watched those versions they’d be thinking "WTF?!"; but this is the first time that Hairspray has been enjoyed by a heterosexual audience (and ironically, this is the first time that the poofs disliked Hairspray, even though many of the producers and directors are gay).
In Spice Girls news, there’s a Spice Girls megamix that is tipped to be released at some point in time. I’ve got a copy of it; though it’s actually only a mix of some of the hits from Spice and a couple of hits from Spiceworld. A friend (who doesn’t remember Forever being leaked to the internet, and therefore didn’t see the irony of the greatest hits album being released on the 7th anniversary of that happening) claimed that there was a rumour going around that W.O.M.A.N was going to be released as a single. I honestly cannot believe it! This rumour has persisted since 1999 - it must be the second longest running rumour in the history of the world, after the chain mail that "MSN Messenger is closing down unless you forward this letter to everyone on your buddy list"!
MSN hasn’t closed down on all the other occasions that I’ve recieved this particular e-mail, so it’s not going to happen. W.O.M.A.N wasn’t released on all the occasions that I heard the rumour in the SFN (Spice Fan Network), so people, it ain’t going to happen!
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