The Goodkind of Customer

I'd like to apologize to those customers who came in to our store yesterday looking for Terry Goodkind's newest book, The Law of Nines. Yes, it should have been on sale yesterday, and it was everywhere else, and we lost your sales. We have come to our senses and placed it back on the floor for sale from here on out. It's even on an introductory discount! I only hope that one of the other chains you went to after we let you down treated your wallet as kindly as we should have and would have.

Today's apology is due on account of a number of factors. First off is our stores lack of access to the internet of the outside world, we can search only our own database and website. Yes, we could have cleared the whole thing up with a quick visit to Terry Goodkind's website, I know, but our store has an Orwellian sort of information control thing going on where the only reality we are to know is what we are provided by our corporate office. There is a lot of disconnection in who knows what in our store. For example, I, as a cashier, had no way of validating any ones claim about the book in question. I only knew the information that our customer service people could relay to me, which was based on what the managers had told them, which was apparently based on an erroneous entry in our companies listing of on-sale dates for new arrivals.
It all comes down to the chain of command. Even though our check-out computers were permitting us to sell the book (attempting to sell many higher-profile books before their street date typically brings up a message to tell us that a book is unsellable), even though the book rang up in the system at a discounted price, and worst of all, even though we had PROMOTIONAL material including buttons to wear DISPLAYING yesterdays date, we had to play it safe and trust that our company listed it's release date two weeks from now for a reason.

It seems kind of like the inversion of the idea of a strict on sale date. Strict on sale dates are placed to ensure competitiveness of the chains, with harsh penalties for stores that sell certain books before their street dates. Today we had something else going on, this was a head start day for all the other chains in our area. Yeah, we had the book, but we want you guys to get the sale, go on, this one's yours man. Competitors? Nah, we love ya!

Hopefully none of the people who came through today were TOO burned by our disallowing them to buy something which they expected to be available today (and with good reason). But they are the Sci-Fi readers, who I typically put faith in to be the more understanding bunch. Other people may pout when the latest book-they'd-never-heard-of-until-it-turned-movie sells out and place an order for said book only to never come by to pick it up when it arrives, but shoppers of the Sci-Fi aisle are more committed than that. When there's a mix-up, they raise an eyebrow, scratch their chin and ask, "are you sure?" but they don't make a scene, they know things will get cleared up eventually, even if it's after they've taken their business elsewhere. And next time around? They'll probably give us a chance to redeem ourselves. Insert Goodkind related pun right here.