Sunday, November 20, 2005
Number Two
My bosses at Restoration Hardware are offically twits.
Okay. So, customer comes in, has a $300 gift certificate. she wants to buy some stuff, and she also wants to make a reservation (ie, to order something in from the California warehouse). So, she wants to use the gift certificate. Fine. We use it for both her store purchase and her reservation. Apparently, along the way, I press a wrong button, and don't notice at the time. Having worked at Restoration Hardware for about a year three years ago, and having just returned, I find the order of things a little odd, but considering that some changes have occured in point of sale computer procedures since I last worked here, I think this must be one of those changes.
So, today at the 7.45am meeting (!), one of the managers asks me about the transaction, describing it as a cheque transaction. This is the incorrect button I must have pressed, so there you have it. When I go over it with yet another manager today, she can't fathom that there was in fact no cheque. But where's the cheque? There is no cheque. I must have pressed that button by mistake. But it prompts you to enter the driver's license. Yes, I must have thought I was entering the gift certificate number. But where's the gift certificate? I gave it back to her with the original balance crossed out, and the new balance written in. So we've lost that money!
Okay. To my mind, this is an easily rectifiable problem. In the mind of the customer, she's not walking around with the original $300. She's walking around with the remainder after her order and purchase of yesterday. So here's whatcha do: post-void the transactions if you need to. I'm not convinced that you need to, but that's just my opinion. So, post void them, and then repurchase the items from both the order and the store purchase, without pressing incorrect buttons, as I admittedly did. This will produce a credit note, which is what is stressing you out so severely. Then, I call the customer, and tell her that I made a mistake, and to bring her gift certificate in the next time she comes to the store, because as it stands, the thing is useless, and we would like to give her an actual useful piece of paper in its stead, but we require the paper trail of the actual gift certificate in corpora. WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND?! It's this one woman in particular who is a deer-in-the-headlights-twit of epic proportions. You don't need to teach me how to redeem a gift certificate. That's not the issue here. The issue is just that I pressed an incorrect button by mistake, NOT because I didn't know what I was doing. Good lord. And! How do we issue a credit note when doing a reservation anyway, since reservations don't go through our cash registers at all?
Okay. So, customer comes in, has a $300 gift certificate. she wants to buy some stuff, and she also wants to make a reservation (ie, to order something in from the California warehouse). So, she wants to use the gift certificate. Fine. We use it for both her store purchase and her reservation. Apparently, along the way, I press a wrong button, and don't notice at the time. Having worked at Restoration Hardware for about a year three years ago, and having just returned, I find the order of things a little odd, but considering that some changes have occured in point of sale computer procedures since I last worked here, I think this must be one of those changes.
So, today at the 7.45am meeting (!), one of the managers asks me about the transaction, describing it as a cheque transaction. This is the incorrect button I must have pressed, so there you have it. When I go over it with yet another manager today, she can't fathom that there was in fact no cheque. But where's the cheque? There is no cheque. I must have pressed that button by mistake. But it prompts you to enter the driver's license. Yes, I must have thought I was entering the gift certificate number. But where's the gift certificate? I gave it back to her with the original balance crossed out, and the new balance written in. So we've lost that money!
Okay. To my mind, this is an easily rectifiable problem. In the mind of the customer, she's not walking around with the original $300. She's walking around with the remainder after her order and purchase of yesterday. So here's whatcha do: post-void the transactions if you need to. I'm not convinced that you need to, but that's just my opinion. So, post void them, and then repurchase the items from both the order and the store purchase, without pressing incorrect buttons, as I admittedly did. This will produce a credit note, which is what is stressing you out so severely. Then, I call the customer, and tell her that I made a mistake, and to bring her gift certificate in the next time she comes to the store, because as it stands, the thing is useless, and we would like to give her an actual useful piece of paper in its stead, but we require the paper trail of the actual gift certificate in corpora. WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND?! It's this one woman in particular who is a deer-in-the-headlights-twit of epic proportions. You don't need to teach me how to redeem a gift certificate. That's not the issue here. The issue is just that I pressed an incorrect button by mistake, NOT because I didn't know what I was doing. Good lord. And! How do we issue a credit note when doing a reservation anyway, since reservations don't go through our cash registers at all?
// posted by MSR @ 10:20 PM 
