Just another day...

I had an interesting customer yesterday who probably felt the need to be sarcastic about Bunnings' no plastic bags policy. Maybe he just needed to provoke me into an argument at 8.05am coz he had to wake up early and take the kids with him to give his wife a break. Anyway, the conversation went like this:

Customer: Can I have a bag with those?
Me: I'm really sorry sir, we don't give out plastic bags here. You could either buy one of the reusable bags for $1.20 or take one of the boxes for free.
Customer: Why don't you give out bags?
Me: It's part of our environmental awareness policy sir.
Customer: Well, you use all those lights, don't you? That uses so much more energy, you know. What's a few bags compared to all those lights?

*PAUSE*

I actually thought of a few replies to give with the customer to match his sarcasm and patronizing voice like

1. "unless you like shopping in the dark"
2. "how would your kids be able to see and touch the stuff in someone else's trolley?"

Or one of those wise, insightful in-your-face comments like

1. "it may not be much to stop using plastic bags, but we have to start somewhere"
2. "those are solar-powered lights sir" --> they're not, I just wanted to be just as sarcastic as you were.

Haha, I'm glad I took the 2 seconds to pause and think about how to reply. From my own dominant logic*, I recognised his behaviour and I knew he wanted to argue with me (maybe to let off some steam after running around after his wandering kids who did not want to listen to daddy) and frankly, I was NOT in the mood. I was tired and stressed with working and trying to do my 3,000 word essay due on Thursday, and it was 8am on a SUNDAY!!!

And so I chose a different tactic. I smiled and told him, "you've got a good point there sir. Thanks for that and I hope you have a great day ahead."

He still tried to provoke me by saying, "it's such a hassle for the customers" to which I just nodded and said, "okay, thanks for the feedback" and went on to serve the next customer in line.

I actually felt like giving him the "we have to start somewhere" retort but in hindsight, even if I had told him that, I don't think I could have 'won' the argument. I felt that the reason he wanted to argue was to lash out at someone, and not to make a constructive criticism on how things are done in the store. So tidak apa la, let him go home frustrated and deal with his frustrations another way.

I don't need to put up with this kind of crap from total strangers.



*Dominant logic is ‘a mindset or world view’ among the top managers or the dominant coalition of an organisation that help them to ‘conceptualize the business and make critical resource allocation decisions’ (Prahalad & Bettis 1986, p. 490). Dominant logic is stored as a ‘shared cognitive map’ and is ‘expressed as a learned, problem-solving behaviour’ that is believed to have evolved via operant conditioning, paradigms, pattern-recognition process and cognitive biases, and is therefore difficult to change (Prahalad and Bettis 1986, p. 490).