Be nice

Does anyone remember those old commercials, I believe they were from Pantene, the "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful" ones? I recently had an incident that somehow made me think about that commercial.

On Wednesday, I was skimming through my email, and noticed that JCPenney had emailed me a $15 off $15 coupon! I printed the coupon out, and figured it would come in handy. Later that day, I saw another email from them, about their sale that was going on that day, with "Huge doorbusters all day, etc" so I thought, "what the heck, I'll go out tonight, might be able to stretch that $15 even further!"

I got to the mall, and went to the store, I didn't need anything in particular, and I'm pretty much settled on Christmas gifts, so my roomie & I decided to head up to housewares. This was where most of the deals were to be found, so I figured I could find something useful. I browsed through the entire section, finally deciding on this roasting pan set. (It's a really nice set, btw!) It was a great deal. It was originally $39.99, on sale for $19.99 and had a $10 mail in rebate. With my coupon, I'd only pay $5 for it, and either get that $5 back, or depending on how the manufacturer does their rebates, actually make an extra $5!

So we go up to the register. The lady working seems pleasant enough... She rings up the item and gives me the total. I hand her the coupon. She looks at me and says, I don't think that it will let me take the coupon for that. I politely stand there and wait for her to give it a shot. In the meanwhile, another lady was approaching, and I guess she saw/overheard the conversation, she had a similiar coupon ($10/$10) - she politely pipes in that the gentleman downstairs explained to her that it would be good off of anything. The cashier then looks at her and tells her that it will not work on everything, and that for example it won't work on the appliance she's holding. She tells her that if she wants to tell her what department this guy was in, she'll call down there and tell him he's handing out wrong information.

Now the whole time, this lady's (cashier) voice is pleasant enough, she has a friendly voice, but the tone she's using and the statements she's making, combined with the facial expressions, body language, are giving off a quite different impression. The other customer leaves the area and the cashier proceeds to begin keying in the coupon. And she's visibly annoyed, she had to key the coupon in twice because she miskeyed it the first time. I continue to stand politely, not speaking, waiting for her to finish. When she gets finished, suprisingly enough, the coupon worked. I scan my card, and pay for the item. That's when it gets really fun.

When the receipt prints out, it also prints out the rebate form. The cashier looks at it, and is standing there holding all of it. She looks up at me and says "Hmmph, looks like this has a $10 rebate, but I don't see how you're going to get a rebate, since you only paid $5 for it to start with!" Then she hesistates, as if she's waiting for me to tell her to just toss it or something. Instead I just smile and wait while she finally hands me my receipt. Out the store I go!

So, why did that remind me of the "Don't hate me..." commercial... Simply because that's not the first time I've been shopping and scored a great deal, only for the employee to think I'm somehow cheating the system. And that's not the only place it happens. To be fair, we've all been guilty of it I'm sure... You go to the store and notice the person checking out in front of you got a great clearance deal on a jacket you bought for full price last month, or even just has a better set of coupons than you do.

The way I see it, we are currently living in some very troubling times. Let's face it, our economy sucks! People are losing their jobs, their homes, everything... every day. We're all feeling the strains of the world right now. Let's not begrudge each other when one of us figures out how to actually make it work. Let's celebrate each other's successes just as much as our own. The world is bad enough without us having to tear each other down!