Switching Lids

It's always interesting to see what customers will do to try and save a couple bucks.

Like you get the ones asking for discounts, or claiming the price was different on the shelf, or price matching our online stores.

And then you have those who try and be sneaky and trick their way into getting a cheaper product. 

In this case. Bettas.

Off and on we have this recurring problem of people switching the lids on our betta cups.

As the top of the lids hold the barcode that we use to scan the bettas to get the price.

And we have quite a few 'smart' customers who realize that if they can switch the lids of a more expensive $20 betta for the less expensive $4 ones then they can save a ton of money that way.

Though the really smart customers don't go for such a huge price difference. They'll switch the lids for like a $10 betta instead. Or even a $15 betta. 

And it was becoming enough of an issue that my cashiers began doing "betta checks" at the register where they would have someone from petcare come up and confirm whether or not the betta listed on the lid was the betta in the cup.

However.
On Friday I decided to pull out an old tactic we used a few years ago, and some of my coworkers had thought may be a good idea to do....and marked the cups.

Where we would put the same initial on the lid and then on the bottom of the cup.

So if a person was grabbing a TwinTail betta the mark on both the lid and the cup would be "TT" 

That way the cashiers could look and see at a glance whether or not the bettas were the correct ones.

The funny thing is...
I had seen the customers walk by with the betta, heading up to the register.
And I could have sworn that the lid on their cup was green.

But somewhere in the timeframe of me passing by them and them actually reaching the register.....

It was discovered that the betta they had had mismatched labels. 
The lid was showing a $4 betta while the cup was showing the $8 betta.

And my manager handled it really well...I'm pretty sure they said something along the lines of "Sorry the lids on this cup has been switched, so the price is actually this much." You know...not accusing them of being the ones to switch the lids (though I'm like 99% sure they did), but letting them know that the problem was recognized and that they were taking the steps to ensure the correct fish was sold to them for the correct price.

I ended up taking the betta from them to go back to our endcap where all our bettas were so I could find the lid that had been switched....

And discovered one of our $4 bettas....was missing it's lid entirely. O.o 
Like...they didn't even switch lids.
They just took the lid off one betta cup and left it open to the world. 
*shakes head*

Which makes me wonder what happened to the original lid. 
Did it break and they were trying to replace it? 
Did they take it off and throw it away?
Who knows.
I never found it.

But thankfully I had extra lids in the back of the store so I could place the proper fish lid on the betta cup and give it back to the customers.

Who hopefully learned their lesson and won't do it again.

But score for us! Ha. We were able to prevent a 'fish theft' by marking the cups so huzzah. :) 

-Sarnic Dirchi