One LONG RANT / Where has the common sense gone?

[What's_nitro?]

I have a job at Sears selling the lawnmowers, fitness equipment, tools, paint- basically a whole side of a store because they are to lazy to hire people for the respective departments. I have to work directly with the public- which is probably the last thing I want to do but here I am.

A while back a guy came in with his GDO (garage door opener) and said that we gave him the wrong rail kit for it when he picked it up. No big deal, except that we no longer sold the GDO and the rail kits separately. At the time we had just recently switched over the the all-in-one-box system so I asked him when he bought it to see if he could just return it for a new one. If it were <= a year ago we could have made an exception, but no, it was over 6 (SIX) years ago! I asked him why he hadn't noticed until now and he said that he bought the GDO expecting his current one to stop working soon (how the hell could he know?) and it didn't (of course) so he just left it sitting in his garage. Then when it finally breaks down he goes to install the new one and realizes that he has the wrong parts. Now, I'm not saying that we (Sears) did nothing wrong, but there has to be a statute of limitations on these things! He bought a Belt Drive GDO and they gave him the Chain Drive rail kit. On every side of the rail kit's box it says in HUGE letters: "CHAIN DRIVE RAIL KIT" and he knew he had purchased a screw drive GDO. I just couldn't believe that he hadn't noticed they were incorrect until now (6 years later). None of the managers that I talked to about it (it goes without saying that he asked to see one at the first sign of resistance) could believe it either. He tried valiantly to convince us that he had no idea until now. It was obvious by his tone that he had just expected us to roll over when he came in and complained a bit. He started yelling when we didn't buy his story so our store manager had to send him packing. I feel bad for the guy, at the same time- What the hell was he thinking? "Hey they gave me the wrong ones but it's OK I can just bring it back whenever and they wil be happy to fix it!" AT the very least I would expect people to return something like that when their old one turned out not to be broken.

This little story actually fits both of the topics here. Lack of common sense and lack of responsibility. My point is that this guys attitude represents about 40% of the people who come in with a problem. It's our fault, not theirs at all. It coudln't be since the customer is always right, right? Wrong. This type of person is what makes me come home and tell everyone that my job sucks. Most people, thankfully, are willing to admit that they are at least partially responsible, and work with me to fix the problem.

There's my rant for the day, who's up next?