A Little Cardboard

It's one thing to have to work a busy Saturday when things are going well.
It's totally another thing to work a busy Saturday when all the customers seem much more demanding and needy than normal.
Like they must have the exact thing they want and won't take no for an answer, and won't take substitutions and such. They have what they want in mind and they want it exactly like that.

*shakes head*

Today I had a customer ask me about a 75 gallon fish tank we sell.
Wanting to know if we had more than just that one tank on the shelf in the back.

No big deal. We have customers who ask all the time if we have more tanks in the back as they think the tanks we have on the shelves are just display tanks, not meant to be moved or sold.
Which isn't the case at all. If you see it, you can buy it. Take it right off the shelf.

But customers also ask us if they have more in the back,
because they think that the tanks come in boxes all wrapped up and such.
Which depending on the tank...some do, some don't.

I can understand why customers want their products wrapped up.
It gives a sense of 'newness.'
A sense that no one else has touched it, or it hasn't been disturbed by other means.

But honestly, we wouldn't sell the tanks if they were covered in brown cardboard.
So when we put it on the shelf we remove it so customers can actually see the tanks they're buying.

Still, this particular customer wanted to know if I had another 75 gallon tank.
So I went and checked.
Though I did tell him that he could take the one we had off the shelf, he wanted to know if we had others.
Turns out we did.
We had one more tank.
ten feet above our heads in our steel. -requiring a Forklift to get it down.

So I returned to the customer.
As he'd been wanting the tank in a box.
And politely explained to him that we did have one more.
But it's 'in the box state' was just a thin layer of cardboard that wrapped around 3 of the sides.
It was hardly any 'protection' that he was looking for. It was like not even a cm thick of cardboard.

I told him that we could take extra boxes from the back and wrap them around the tank that was already out on the floor to help provide some protection.

But no.
He wanted the one that was on the steel.
*sighs*
So, I grabbed a manager to get it down via forklift.
And brought it over to him.
and he seemed surprised that it wasn't as much protection as I think he thought it was.
Yah. It's not like its covered in a box. It's just a book cover sort of covering. Nothing more. *shakes head*
But apparently it was 'protection' enough for his long hour and a half drive back home.

Hopefully the tank made it all the way home in one piece.
At least he was understanding that 'that's how the tank comes'
As other customers don't understand the concept that things aren't packaged how they think they are.

-Sarnic Dirchi