Confessions of a Cheapskate

By far, the most frustrating part of being a bargain shopper is poor customer customer service, especially at the register.

Cashier training manual?

Not everyone is as enthusiastic about getting a great deal with coupons, I’ve learned. I’ve had more than my fair share of run-ins withcashiers whose mouths get sucked into a thin, tight,  disapproving line on their face as they watch my total fall farther and farther down to a dollar or two. Total buzzkill.

I have seriously low expectations when it comes to customer service. I don’t expect friendly, or upbeat. I don’t expect anyone to make eye contact with me, or ask me how I am today, or even comment on the weather.  I am content to not be treated like a criminal.

I think what I see is a collision between lack of proper training and harsh, absolute consequences to the cashiers, both/either poor management.

Store policy at Meijer, for example, seems to depend on who is at the helm of the register. I had a run in recently with a cashier who claimed to have been a cashier for over 20 years (that was her way of condemning me for questioning her authoritae) whom I proved wrong. The sad part was that I spoke to a store manager – not a shift manager, not an employee trainer, but a bonafide, drove-the-Benz-to-work-got-my-picture-on-the-wall-store-manager, whom I had to explain coupon bar codes to.  The short of story is that any coupon bar code that starts with a ‘5,’ will double through any register programmed to double coupons, while the ones that start with a ‘9′ do not. Most coupons read, “Do Not Double or Triple” across the top. However, most are coded with the magic 5 that allow it. The cashier in question manually entered my coupons so that they would not double and told me I was trying to commit fraud by asking her to scan them. She thought my total was going too low and ‘wasn’t going to let me get away with it.’ The store manager was impressed by this little tidbit of information.

If the woman who manages the store doesn’t know how coupons work, how can I as a customer expect that any of the staff has been trained on they work?

This was not the first time I was accused of fraud, and unfortunately, it won’t be my last. It’s frustrating and it angers me and  I want to roll up the sales ad and beat the  shit out of the cashier with it, but I have a tremendous amount of personal restraint.

I have learned that one way to get great customer service is to walk into a store with a notepad, or clipboard, or a binder with pen in hand and examine things on the shelf carefully. I found this out by trial and error when I first started to coupon shop. I realized that the longer I took to shop, and the more I shuffled through my notes and added to them with my pen, the more people come up and ask, “Are you finding everything OK?” They think you are on official business, or possibly a mystery shopper. (Mystery shoppers are not obvious like this, FTR.)

I further realized that with pen and paper in hand, should someone ask you that question, and you take a peek at their name tag (squint at it a little, if you don’t think they noticed,) and jot a note down, whatever it is you ask for, they’ll probably even find. In September, there was a store sale on juice pouches and with my coupons they were going to work out to be just .69 vs. $2.87 full retail price. When I found the shelf empty, I parked my cart and started going through my hand-written notes and thumbing through my coupons. The most friendly employee showed up after a while, and after looking at her name tag for a brief second, she hightailed it to the stock room to find me some juice. Truth is, I was looking at her name tag because I almost always fill out the feedback slips and like to mention good/bad employees by name.

Pity is, you can only do this on occasion, because eventually most of the cashiers and such start recognizing you as one of those dreadful coupon ladies.

It’s not all bad.  I’ve been high-fived at Kroger by cashiers, twice! There’s actually a position at the cosmetics counter held at Walgreen’s that gets a spiff of sales from her register, and this woman doesn’t care if you have coupons. She’ll dig some up from her own personal stash if she thinks that’s what it will take for you to bump her pay by a dollar, she’ll do it happily!

Stark contrast from the witch who runs the regular register who sighs deep when she sees me coming toward her with full basket! Pity that many managers don’t seem concerned with this sort of feedback. Maybe this is because they already know that I’ll take the abuse to save a few bucks… cos I totally will.

All we can do is shoppers – coupon shoppers or otherwise, is to vote with our wallets and shop elsewhere, or give the stores feedback good and bad.

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