Several days ago I went to Wal-Mart and bought a 4-pack of spoons for $1.00. At least I thought I did. After I got home, I realized I wasn’t charged for them.
This weekend I went back to Wal-Mart and took the bar code with me so I could pay for what I had stolen nearly purchased. When I got to the Customer Service desk, the girl looked at me like I was crazy because I wanted to pay for the spoons. She said, “Wait a minute, you came back to pay for something we didn’t charge you for?!?!? Hold on…I have to go find someone else. This has never happened before!”
She went and grabbed another co-worker who gave me the crazy look. She said, “So let me get this straight…we didn’t charge you for $1.00 spoons and now you’ve come back to pay for them?!?” “Yep, that’s right,” I told her.
The next thing she told me was rather disappointing: “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.” That didn’t sit right with me. I told her, “No, I want to pay for them.” She gave me the crazy look again and said, “Seriously, you can leave. You don’t have to pay for these. It’s not a big deal.” Being adamant, I politely told her, “No, I can’t do that. I feel like it would be stealing from the company. I want to pay for them.”
When I said that, both Wal-Mart employees threw their hands up in the air in disgust and one of the girls said, “Fine! If you want to pay for them, then pay for them! That will be $1.09.” They seemed slightly perturbed that my decision to pay for the spoons was actually forcing them to do their jobs. My bad! [For the Sheldon's of the world...that was sarcasm] The looks on their faces didn’t get much better when I pulled out my credit card, but oh well. They reiterated once more that they had never seen that happen before. At that, I took my receipt, said “Have a good day” and left.
I’m not trying to pat myself on the back for anything. I didn’t do anything special. I just paid for something I forgot to pay for previously, and $1.09 at that. But there’s 2 things that really struck me about the ordeal:
1) The workers had never seen that happen before. I would think that sort of thing happens everyday, and yet so few people in our world have the ethical mindset to correct the issue. Several years ago, my grandmother left a store and realized she hadn’t paid for a pack of gum. When she went back in to pay for it, one of the cashiers announced it to the entire store in almost a mocking manner. More than anything he was shocked that she came back in. That shouldn’t be shocking; that should be the norm. Sadly, it’s not.
2) The attitudes of the workers. Obviously Wal-Mart has plenty of money as a corporation and my spoons were not going to affect the paychecks of the two workers. But I was very surprised to see how adamant they were about not having me pay. Their attitudes showed they thought it was dumb for me to come back, and they didn’t want to bother with fixing them problem…even though it only involved clicking the scan gun and handing me a receipt. Yes, it was only $1.09, but in principle it shouldn’t have mattered if it was a pack of spoons or a $1599.99 flat screen HD TV. Right is right. Wrong is wrong. It’s sad that we have lost sense of true values. Sad, yet not surprising.
In an interesting side note…I’ve yet to hear a word back from Sonic…
