Hopefully when shoppers are out in their natural habitat, whether it be a strip or shopping mall, they can precisely calculate their budget, or at least be aware of a relative amount of money they can actually spend on something.
Often times, customers will come to the register with their merchandise, pay with their debit or credit card, and then they hear the embarrassing four words no one wants to subjected to: “Your card was declined.”
Now, of course anyone would have a natural surprise reaction to this because no one wants to be confronted with that. There’s not a single person out there who would ever want to hear those words.
However, it is in how the shopper chooses to deal with this that determines not only how the rest of the transaction will go, but reveals what type of person they are.
There are those who will say things like “That’s impossible,” or “I just put money on there,” which are both completely reasonable statements, but at the end of the day you still need to pay for whatever merchandise you brought to the cash register and those words do not equal actual payment.
And this starts a chain reaction, especially if there’s a lot of people on “The Line.” The looks will increase, the body language will become a tad more aggressive and everyone will now be looking at the customer instead of the employee.
Customarily, the customers on line will be looking at the employee wishing they can just instantly decrease the wait time to make the line go away. But now, the tide has turned against their fellow brethren; the shoppers.
Granted those who have entire days of shopping might have their bank automatically freeze their account in anticipation of possible fraud, but most of the time that doesn’t happen. It’s even weirder when the customer with the declined card starts arguing with you as if it’s your fault.
Ordinarily I believe that individual person is typically responsible for how much money they spend, and how much credit is available on each piece of plastic they have on them, but I guess sometimes that’s just wishful thinking.
In the end, the customer uses another card (hopefully one that won’t be declined), pays with cash, or wants you to put the item on hold for them so they can purchase it when they actually have the funds to pay for it. They never come back.
quarterlifeinretail 