The loss-leading flyer was in my mailbox. It was for a store a town over, a store I might have stopped by twice in the past 10 years.
I bore no animosity toward the store, it just wasn’t convenient or interesting. Until I noticed that it carried my wife’s favorite wine and it was on sale. And, in addition to the sale, if I bought six bottles there was a further discount. It said so right on the flyer. Double score!
I scheduled my daily chores and outings around swinging by the store. I am familiar with the discount/loss-leader proposition. Typically, something is given at a deep discount in order to convince you to check out the other offerings. The hope is that you will be so impressed that you will either buy something else, become a regular customer, or both.
We are people of habit. That’s why there’s “comfort food,” and why drinks like the Old Fashioned have been around for more than two centuries. Both are good and recognizable. Author Benjamin Alire Sáenz once posited that “change is overrated” and in spite of all the media making big noises about every new thing, it’s the tried and true that tends to stick around. Hamburgers might come with goat cheese and pickled daikon these days, but underneath it they are still just hamburgers. And Old Fashioneds are just whiskey, bitters and sugar. But I digress.
My new experience began with promise. The wine department was easily found and there was signage everywhere about the sale. It appeared that this chain of supermarkets had modified its approach. It was no longer broken white Formica tile and fluorescent lights; now it was warm wood and muted colors. Certainly, it felt more contemporary.
I located the wine I was interested in, but unfortunately there were only four bottles. I looked in the cold case, endcaps and shelves. Still just four bottles. After a few minutes of looking, I decided to do what any reasonable person would do — I asked for help. Well, not asked exactly. I pushed the lighted button that said “Help.”
A few minutes later, a man approached me.
“Yes?” he asked.
“I was wondering if you had two more bottles of this wine so I can get the discount.”
“Do you order wine here often?” he asked.
“No.”
“Do you shop here often?”
“No.”
“Well let me show you something.”
“OK,” I said.
He took me to the empty slot from which I had taken the four bottles.
“I already looked there,” I said.
He held up his hand.
“See this number?” he said, pointing at the last digit on a nine-number SKU underneath the shelf space that had held the wine.
“Yeah.”
“It’s a 2,” he said. “If the number has a 2, that means I order on Tuesday for Thursday delivery.”
“OK,” I responded, wondering where this was going.
“If it’s a 3, then I order on Wednesday for Friday delivery.”
“OK, but do you have two more …” I began but did not get to finish.
“Today is Thursday,” he said, interrupting.
“All I need is …” I attempted to interject.
“You have now emptied my shelf,” he said. “So now I don’t have any of this wine for the rest of the week.”
“Look, I just want to know if you have two more bottles so I can get the discount,” I said, pointing at the tag next to the SKU number that read “buy six bottles and get an extra 10% off.”
He shook his head.
“I am trying to educate you on how this works,” he said.
“Do you have two more bottles or not?” I finally asked, tiring of the whole interaction.
“We don’t keep wine in the back,” he said.
“Maybe we can ask the manager,” I said.
“I am the manager.”
Later, when I was standing in line, he came up to me with two more bottles of the wine.
Leaving me with these thoughts:
• The devil may be in the details, but hell is in the explanation.
• In customer service, “let me check” solves a world of problems.
• “Those who seek power are often unworthy of that power,” wrote Plato.
• Customer service is about customer service. The minute you lose sight of that, you aren’t fixing the problem, you are the problem.
• If I lived in that town and I shopped at that store, I probably wouldn’t anymore.
• Alire Sáenz ended up writing children’s books. Maybe he was onto something.
Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com
