I’ve been in retail way too long. I read a really short, nothing of an article which spoke about someone who bought a bunch of seeds from a Dollar Tree for pennies; later, the grateful customer brought the store manager some vegetables that were grown from those seeds. It’s a nice little story, I guess, however my unfortunate first impression was that the manager broke the rules.
“Pennied” items aren’t supposed to be sold, but destroyed and tossed out, as the company has written those items off as a loss, and the penny sale value assigned to the items are a placeholder in the books, not an actual price. Further, I’m not sure it’s necessarily true in this case–though it might be–but various items, such as seed packets, are not inventory owned by the store or company, but items that are sold on consignment; it is very possible that the manager technically cost the company additional money by selling the seeds–assuming they were rang through the register by the UPC and not manually keyed as something untraceable.
Do I really care? No. Really, my feelings on the situation are, great for the customer, and awesome to hear the seeds were used rather than tossed in the trash. I just hate that my mind went to the stupid business side of things–and that’s the point behind me writing about it.
I dunno.
I hate retail.