Tuesday, October 2, 2012

TRAGEDY OF THE SANDWICH CARD: Today, as I often do, I bought a sandwich at Whole Foods and dutifully had my sandwich card stamped. Except, the cashier gave me a sly wink and with a low voice pointed out that he was intentionally double-stamping my sandwich card. No question as to whether he might have mistook the number of sandwiches I purchased and there was no long line or other inconvenience that might merited additional compensation from Whole Foods. This was a completely gratuitous giveaway of Whole Foods property.

To wit, what are my ethical obligations here? Do I have a duty to report the cashier? This seems overly harsh. Should I simply decline to get my card stamped next time to render whole Whole Foods? Should I destroy the other 1-stamp sandwich card in my wallet to render Whole Foods whole? Can I ethically assume that cashiers have discretion to double-stamp cards at will? Does my complete (although certainly penetrable) ignorance of that authority change my ethical calculus?

Does this deadweight loss in the sandwich program impart upon me an obligation to other people who rely upon sandwich cards?

Is it relevant that the chicken sandwich with roasted peppers was pretty damned good?

15 comments:

  1. Watts4:07 PM

    I find, generally in these situations, one might be reasonably expected to hand over a phone number and suggest coffee.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There is someone in our cafeteria who will occasionally double or even triple punch my meal cards and those of my colleagues. Because the prices in the cafeteria are ridiculous for the quality of food, we simply say thanks and then try to determine among ourselves who is the current favorite of this guy based on who got more card punches that day.

    ReplyDelete
  3. isaac_spaceman6:36 PM

    I feel like most well-managed businesses with any degree of local autonomy (and WF operates with a great deal of local autonomy) give their employees some discretion with respect to promotions, customer loyalty rewards, and customer service adjustments. Even the conspiratorial whisper is kind of a smart customer-relations ploy -- it aligns you with the employees, not with the ordinary customers. If the checker were saying "come see me at the back door and bring cash," that would be one thing, but an almost negligible extra reward for a regular customer doesn't ring any alarm bells for me absent any reason to believe that the conduct wouldn't be okay to management.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I had a former student who often gave me free popcorn at the movie theater. One matinee when nobody was around, I told him that he really didn't need to do that- I was happy to pay. He let me know that management had told them to give away a certain number of free popcorns to non-friends each shift in an effort to build customer rapport and loyalty.

    I'm not sure if that was true- he was a bright enough student that he could have come up with that on the spur of the moment- but it certainly worked. I still go to that theater, even though he's long gone. I tell myself any wink-wink-nudge-nudge-this-is-free-but-only for-you-this-one-time that I've ever been given is similarly corporate approved.

    I may be choosing to believe that.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Roger7:04 PM

    So wait, this is a question about apparent authority from a law-school agency exam, right?

    ReplyDelete
  6. gtv20007:06 PM

    A similar thing happens to me at the local chain that has rice bowls with chicken teriyaki. I go there about once or twice or week, always order the same thing (the cheap special, dark chicken small bowl with a soda). They know me and often double punch my card. This doesn't concern me, I figure they have some latitude for regulars. The thing that I find odd is then when I go to redeem my full card they try to convince to get something more expensive than my regular cheap meal.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I think It's a tenth of a credit towards a sandwich with a heavily-inflated price, at an establishment where probably a lot of the customers are annoying, high-maintenance whiney-faces. If you are not a high-maintenance whiney-face, congratulations! You have been jumped slightly ahead in the queue for a free sandwich.


    You could also consider it karma payment for people like me, that have a collection of enough one-stamp cards from Luke's Lobster to entitle me to a free roll, if stamps were commutable in any way.

    ReplyDelete
  8. The Pathetic Earthling9:12 PM

    To quote the great Alan O. Sykes, "Say a little more..."

    ReplyDelete
  9. victoria9:27 PM

    The cashier at the yarn store I frequent generally "rounds up" on my frequent buyer card (you get a stamp for every $15 you spend, and she'll bump it up to the next stamp), and says it's because she knows I'm loyal to there store. I've never thought it was an issue, especially since she's close enough to the owner that if the owner didn't want it to happen, it wouldn't.

    ReplyDelete
  10. If you're not willing to get the cashier fired, you might want to consider self-immolation in the parking lot. The sandwich gods must be appeased.

    ReplyDelete
  11. In my country, you are now his wife.

    ReplyDelete
  12. sconstant12:45 AM

    It's funny, because when I first read this I remembered an occasion when a cashier at Whole Foods comped me something that had not been rung up due to inattention by one or both of us. I protested a bit, and the cashier told me that they had a certain dollar amount of latitude with each shift and they were encouraged to use it to keep things moving and promote goodwill. Which it did. But if it wasn't the same student who was working at Whole Foods, it's probably true (since it's less likely something that a lot of people independently invent to tell random people while they're jeopardizing their job to give out free stuff to those random people.)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Joan Roseman9:20 AM

    The assistant manager at my regular Starbucks routinely comps me for drinks about twice a month. At first I thought this was irregular but recently he introduced me to his boss as his "customer for life" and the boss gave me a gift bag containing a mug, a package of VIA iced coffee mixes and one of those permanent sleeves. It happens.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Saray9:52 AM

    I've got three, all residing in different handbags/wallets.

    ReplyDelete
  15. You should submit this to Chuck Klosterman for The Ethicist.

    ReplyDelete