After college, I worked at a small camera shop. It was way fun, and sometimes I thought I was the only person running it. I had to do everything: sell cameras, order merchandise, help print enlargements, run the register, make dumb displays, change lightbulbs... a lot of things. And I think I was pretty good at it. Unfortunately the pay was miserable, I only got 30 minutes for lunch, and they started making us wear dumb shirts with the store's name on it.
We had a whole mess of customers who were basically taking advantage of us, though. They would be nice people who would come in to get thousands of prints made, and then, "OH NO!" they can't pay for it then.
So, they would come by and pay a little every week (which was slightly nightmarish on our end... keeping track of who paid what when and for what). Often times, they would say something like, "bill me" or "put it on my tab" and take the stuff with them. Then they would come in every other month and pay on their account.
"Here's $3.00, how much do I owe now?"
"Um, let's see, you know owe, um. Ok. Hang on. Yea, here it is: you now owe $497"
What annoyed me the most was how they would try to charm you. I would slip into 'cold' mode if people started this with me and try to basically say that they need to pay for it now if they want to leave the store with it. The owner was much softer with these people, even though he was a shrewd businessman and knew what was going on. But, maybe there was some reasoning about keeping all customers happy no matter what or he had a history with these people or something.
I don't know.
But, these people knew if they could somehow wait around long enough for him to poke his head out of the back they would be good to go.
The reason I mention this was I just got back from mailing some cds to Pony and at the shipping shoppe, there was this woman doing the same thing to their staff.
She was complimenting the lady behind the counter about her hair and just talking away about random things, distracting them I believe from the fact that she hadn't paid for her mailbox in the past couple of months.
She had all these dumb requests and had to show them all these irrelevant items in her purse and mention her illness and how much her medicine cost. She then slipped in the fact that she had come to pay off her debt, or at least a fraction of it.
But, the whole time she was 'Blah blah blah this" and "blah blah blah that".
For whatever reason, it annoyed the hell out me and I remembered all these people at the camera shop doing the same thing. Going for the sympathy angle or complimenting me or whatever.
I mean, I am also in debt. Credit cards out the proverbial wazoo. But I try not to over-extend myself (other than credit cards).
Ugh.
I should shut up though. I only have about 2 months reserve if I lost my job. I could easily be broke
