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Undertoad · 12-03-2012, 02:48 PM

Good one just now, and -- well this is what happens all day long.

Crazy woman comes in and says she pawned a ring two weeks ago and would like it back. Does she have the original pawn ticket? No, they didn't give her one.

Well we give a yellow pawn ticket to everyone who pawns something. It's all very carefully controlled. She now says she sold it to us. Well, I explain, if she sold it to us it is not even here. It's in our storage facility which is off-site.* She demands that she MUST have her ring. "You puttin' one over on me!"

She spends a good five minutes going through her wallet full of crap. This is another thing with these folk: the wallet stuffed full of papers, receipts, and other crap. Every single customer has this, and they all spend many minutes looking through it.

She produces one of our cards with the details written on it. We gave her $4 for a silver ring. That too is typical. Silver goes for a lot less than gold, and when we give people a number for silver jewelry, they usually hate us. It's just based on what the stuff weighs, we weigh everything, and we give everyone the same price on the same amount of silver. A sterling silver ring is simply not worth shit. It will weigh nothing, have no value and we will be doing the people a favor by paying them for their shitty silver ring.

And when we give someone a card, it means they sold the thing to us and wanted some documentation. There's no receipt on a sale. (We actually get the receipt, since we are the ones who bought it.)

So I explain three times that her ring is long gone and she only gets madder and thinks we swindled her. As she leaves she says "I ought to sue your asses!" and I say "We welcome your attorney's phone call."

In this case the store was full of people and I could tell they all understood what was going on: that this woman was profoundly ignorant and crazy and had no idea what happened. The next guy in line wanted a money order and he just shook his head and muttered, "crazy woman."

*Now here's the thing: the ring is definitely here, in our massive safe. By LAW, we have to keep all goods sold to us for 90 days. And there is no storage facility. That is a polite lie, because if they think their thing is here, they get even more indignant. We tell people that a whole different set of guys pull all the stuff and melt it down immediately. That makes them angry at an imaginary crew and lets us off the hook.

12-03-2012, 02:48 PM	#240
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Good one just now, and -- well this is what happens all day long. Crazy woman comes in and says she pawned a ring two weeks ago and would like it back. Does she have the original pawn ticket? No, they didn't give her one. Well we give a yellow pawn ticket to everyone who pawns something. It's all very carefully controlled. She now says she sold it to us. Well, I explain, if she sold it to us it is not even here. It's in our storage facility which is off-site.* She demands that she MUST have her ring. "You puttin' one over on me!" She spends a good five minutes going through her wallet full of crap. This is another thing with these folk: the wallet stuffed full of papers, receipts, and other crap. Every single customer has this, and they all spend many minutes looking through it. She produces one of our cards with the details written on it. We gave her $4 for a silver ring. That too is typical. Silver goes for a lot less than gold, and when we give people a number for silver jewelry, they usually hate us. It's just based on what the stuff weighs, we weigh everything, and we give everyone the same price on the same amount of silver. A sterling silver ring is simply not worth shit. It will weigh nothing, have no value and we will be doing the people a favor by paying them for their shitty silver ring. And when we give someone a card, it means they sold the thing to us and wanted some documentation. There's no receipt on a sale. (We actually get the receipt, since we are the ones who bought it.) So I explain three times that her ring is long gone and she only gets madder and thinks we swindled her. As she leaves she says "I ought to sue your asses!" and I say "We welcome your attorney's phone call." In this case the store was full of people and I could tell they all understood what was going on: that this woman was profoundly ignorant and crazy and had no idea what happened. The next guy in line wanted a money order and he just shook his head and muttered, "crazy woman." *Now here's the thing: the ring is definitely here, in our massive safe. By LAW, we have to keep all goods sold to us for 90 days. And there is no storage facility. That is a polite lie, because if they think their thing is here, they get even more indignant. We tell people that a whole different set of guys pull all the stuff and melt it down immediately. That makes them angry at an imaginary crew and lets us off the hook.