Picture this: you visit your go to bottle shop, where just like normal you buy your weekly beer, which includes a four pack from Block 15. You pay, leave, and forget about it. Over the next two weeks, you return three or four times. Sometimes it's to replenish the beer fridge, others for a beer or two on draft. It's nearly three weeks later when the employee that rang up the purchase at the start of the story asks if they can speak with you. They tell you they made a mistake and forgot to ring you up for the Block 15 4pk. They inform you that they paid for it and the implication is clear that they'd like you to pay them back. My question is: how do you react?
Look at them blankly, waiting for an explicit ask. "Are you sure?" I don't suppose you have a receipt? Or if not, paid with a card, can check the history and try and remember what else you bought at the time and see if the total charge makes sense? I mean, if it's legitimately possible they forgot to ring it up, I'd probably be willing to pay them back. I don't always look at the details when I pay either. If you know they are in the wrong (or at least doubt they are right) and I'm guessing you saw this person multiple times on the interim visits I'd really want to know why they waited so long.
Have you confirmed that you in fact did not pay for the beer several weeks ago? If the employee realized their mistake and paid for the beer to stay out of trouble, then I guess I could see their point of view. I don’t know enough about the responsibilities of retail staff to offer an educated opinion—the closest I can come to it is, if I make a mistake while I’m working on a project I don’t charge my client for the time to resolve it, I fix it on my own time and never really mention it to anyone. So somewhat analogous to that, I guess the employee made a mistake and has already dealt with it how they saw fit. It would be up to you whether you choose to compensate them now. But of course this would be only after confirming you did not in fact already pay for the beer the first time.
Yes, it bothered me to be put on the spot weeks later as if I somehow shared the blame for what happened. I instantly agreed to pay for it because I felt bad that she took the money out of her own pocket. Working retail is hard enough without paying for mistakes like that. But the more I thought about it the more it bothered me. I actually run a retail business and would never ask my staff to pay for a mistake like that (that's what conversations or write-ups are for) and I'd sure as hell never allow my people to ask a customer weeks later to pay for what is our mistake. The customer shouldn't be made to feel awkward because we screwed up. I go back and forth with whether I'm wrong to take issue with the store's approach though. A friend that works there did confirm she didn't charge me, but I don't know for sure whether she paid it, or whether the store advocated that she do so and ask me to pay her back. Either way it's ruined my desire to shop there.
I asked a friend days after I'd paid her back about it and he confirmed she forgot to ring me up. I don't know if that's policy for employees to cover those mistakes. But I'd take issue with a store that takes that approach.
Sure, but if you don’t know if management put the employee up to it or if she made the request on her own to stay out of potential trouble (basically trying to cover her ass because she realized she screwed up), you’re operating on incomplete information. Maybe the employee is desperate to hold onto her job and also doesn’t have a lot of money. In that scenario I could see her, awkward as it is, feeling compelled to pull you aside and ask you to reimburse her—after all, it was an honest mistake and you would have paid in the first place if the mistake had not been made. But without knowing a little more it seems hard to know whether you have good reason not to feel good about shopping there anymore. It’s up to you, of course, but there just still seem to be some gray areas that need to be filled in to understand exactly how things went down.
Yeah, agreed - lots of gray. I try to assume best intent and I know retail workers are under a lot of stress. I would HOPE the business owner wouldn't have an environment where a worker feels like they have to take care of a mistake like that on their own and they can't just have an honest conversation, but not everyone runs their business in that spirit. I know I've worked at places where if you screwed up it would come out of your check AND you'd get written up or whatever the equivalent is, so I can understand it a bit. All that said, if this is me, this happens ONCE. And from now I'm on I'm checking the receipt every time/watching the output on the scanning monitor to make sure it doesn't happen again.
A: I'm not saying this with a lot of certainty, but I'm not sure an employer can require an employee to pay for the mistake in a scenario like this. Like if a table dine & dashes in a restaurant. B: If the employee chose to pay for it, it was their decision to do so. I can understand wanting to get reimbursement, but doing it in public, at the counter, was a suboptimal approach. Maybe pull you aside have a quiet chat on the subject. C: The employee is a human, and humans make mistakes. Mistakes have various price tags. D: How is your relationship with that store? If things are good, and you'd like to keep it that way, repayment is your cost of keeping the peace. If the stinkeye from staff doesn't bother you, screw it. E: If this is the store I think it is, you know that I have no love lost for them. My work gave me a $25 gift card for there one year, and I went and spent about $22-23 of it. Went back a few months later, grabbed some beers to send out, and told them that I'd like to spend the last few bucks on the card, and I'd pay the rest in cash. They ran the card, asked if I was sure of the amount, and I said, nit exactly, but it's only a few bucks. Employee says there's $25 on it. I said, hold on, I'll be back in a minute. Made sure I spent all of it that time. Maybe things like that are common there?
⁸ What is my relationship with the business? If it is good and familiar, I will make good on the situation. And I will treat EVERY future transaction with scrutiny. I want that business to do well. But I also want every transaction to be equitable.
As Terry pointed out, when the human factor is involved, mistakes are always going to be part of the equation. That being said... I confess I'm puzzled by several aspects of this transaction. Personally, when I make a large transaction at a beer store (or any store for that matter), I typically have a general idea what the final cost is going to be. So if my total bill was $15 or $20 less than what I expected, that's probably something I'd notice. So I'd almost certainly say something, along the lines of "hmmm... that's a bit less than what I was expecting. Not complaining, but could you double check to make sure you charged me for everything?" Most of the time when I do this, the salesperson has indeed neglected to charge me for something (this usually happens at a bar or taproom, NOT at a store). Next there's the delay in notifying @TheBungyo about this mistake. My memory isn't the greatest, and so the longer the store "forgets" to tell me about the mistake, the greater the likelihood I'm going to have no recollection of the transaction (and so have no choice but to accept the store's version of what took place). That would annoy me, especially if they had ample opportunity to tell me sooner. Lastly... maybe I'm just being dumb, but how in the world did the store figure out @TheBungyo hadn't paid for the beer? Usually if the employee forgets to scan the sku code an alarm goes off when the customer leaves the store. That apparently didn't happen here. So how did the store ascertain the beer in question hadn't been paid for? Lastly... many years ago I worked in a wine store in Memphis for roughly 5 years. Frankly, I can never recall a store employee paying for this sort of mistake. It would be much more appropriate for the store to absorb this kind of loss, which would be a write off for them anyway. To be honest, I cant recall this sort of mistake ever happening. Sometimes an employee might input the wrong price (we weren't using Sku codes back then), but I can't recall anyone forgetting to charge someone for a bottle of wine or booze. Long story short, this whole incident doesn't feel right to me. If I were in @TheBungyo's shoes and was convinced this was all on the up and up, then I'd go ahead and pay for the additional beer. However, I'd likely discontinue shopping at this particular store from here on out.
My buddy that works there said they figured out what happened because the four pack was brand new and not in the system. That means she would have had to look up the price and enter it manually. And the reason I remember buying it is that I almost never buy four packs, opting for singles instead typically. As for the final cost, I don't often look at the price of what I'm buying. I just usually assume each can is in the normal ballpark price range. I do check if it's something barrel aged or unusual. It does kill my desire to shop there, which sucks because they're really the only game in town as far as selection goes. My friend that works there didn't know anything beyond me not being charged for it and suggested I speak with the manager if I have concerns. But that feels weird too. Like, speak with him to what end? They can't take back embarrassing me.
Yeah, I know you dislike this place enough that I can't even picture you in there. I paid without hesitation because I hate the idea of a frontline employee footing any portion of my bill. I was also blindsided. Once I had a chance to run through it again is when I began to feel embarrassed and unhappy with what went down. It's kind of telling that no one else here has ever had a similar situation.
Hey! I was there back in Feb/Mar and had a pour of Younger! After thinking on it more after my post, I've got a couple additional things. Like John mentioned, at bars/breweries/taprooms, there have been times when my bill was notable more or less than my mental math told me it would be, and I have spoken up, so maybe I wouldn't be as harsh as my other post made it seem. And the 3 week wait bothers me more as I pondered it. At that point, the store/employee just has to take the loss, and bringing it up publicly at that point probably would have resulted in an unpleasant exchange for all involved. The family of the owner of the store used to own a string of mini-marts/gas stations in the area, and so I wonder, with an extensive background in retail, and thus the knowledge that a certain level of 'shrinkage' is inevitable, just what the stores specific policies are on the this. If the employee was pressured into repaying (this was what came up after a very quick entry into a search engine: https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/...employees-pay-for-breakage-or-customer-theft/), it might not even be legal. Why was the product available for purchase, if they hadn't entered into their system yet? if it's not in the POS, it's the same as if it didn't exist. The employee should have taken a moment to get it entered before making the sale. Yes, this would have caused a bit of a delay for you, and anyone behind you in line, but, such is life. Employee didn't take that time, so their lack of effort shouldn't come at your expense. With Michael leaving the downtown food coop a couple years ago, Bevmo being Bevmo, Great Northern closing, and the store in question being who they are, retail beer options in The City of Subdued Excitement are seriously lacking outside of the bigger craft brands, and the local breweries. I need to hit the lotto.
Seems like this reflects a larger problem, doesn't it? This seems like the sort of thing that should never happen (putting stock out on the floor that hasn't been entered into the POS system), and then your employee doesn't catch it when the product is wrung up? It's hard to even imagine a business that's this poorly run... and then to make matters worse, you put the customer on the spot because of your own incompetence? It's really pretty amazing.
And, they're (seemingly) very successful. I'm sure that being the only game in town has a lot to do with that.
The thought crossed my mind that this story was likely made up, in order to place additional pressure on @TheBungyo to make good on the cost of the beer. A lot of customers in a similar situation might very well say "screw you" if it was just a store loss, but who wants to stick it to some poor schmuck of an employee who's probably barely making minimum wage? Also... Aside from the legality of such an action, you'd have to be one asshat of an employer if you forced your employees to cover the cost of a store loss anytime someone made an innocent mistake. What's next? Holding employees responsible for breakage, theft and outdated inventory?
Despite the numerous fishy elements here, I would trust your friend who works there that it was a legit omission and try to let it go. Perfectly reasonable for it to bug you, but by this point you’ve almost certainly “spent” more in negative feelings than the cost of the 4pk. And they are kinda the only game in town. I’ve experienced situations at multiple stores where the barcode of a new release hadn’t been added yet, and could see how they set the problem aside for the end to ring the rest your order then forgot. I’d probably ask your friend what kind of thin ice the employee was on that they couldn’t confess their mistake and have the business take the small loss. Or if that’s management’s policy (which would make me less likely to shop/support there vs. the scenario being discussed). I’ve made small mistakes (occasionally) my whole career and never felt like my boss wouldn’t shrug off something that minor.
Generally, I feel it is the responsibility to correctly ring up the sale and it’s their loss if they didn’t. Unless they have clear proof, how can they prove you didn’t pay? I’d be very surprised if an employee approached you directly. It sounds somewhat like a shake-down. Do you personally know this person? If they are a friend, then I think you might have an obligation to.
Seen this happen a few times, but as John says mostly in a Taphouse. Usually I will get the bill and swipe the card, never even thinking. Next day look at my bank account and realize they missed a beer or even two. Will go back next week and offer to pay .they mostly wave it away. Your a regular after all. Bartender gets huge tip
any bottle shop worth their salt would have dealt with it behind the scenes and never mentioned it to you. it is in no way your fault (if you weren't actively trying to dodge the charge) ... if the owner pressured the employee to do this i probably wouldn't shop there anymore.
