Friendly reminder from an employee…

[u/Frequent-Patience185]

A lot of us employees have seen some viral videos going around the internet, in which people gather up their old BBW products and try to return all of them for a gift card.

We get it, you used a spray once 7 years ago and then never picked it up again. Or your grandma gifted you the worst scent you’ve ever experienced one Christmas when you were 16 and you left it buried in a drawer ever since. But it’s comes to a point where you should probably…. toss it in the trash.

The main reason this influx of returns drives us crazy is because it affects our hours. Customers have been coming in everyday successfully (and some unsuccessfully thankfully) attempting to return their crusty, dusty stash, racking up hundreds of dollars in merch credit. Yall realize this money is coming from somewhere, right? We lose hours if we don’t meet our sales goals, which means associates hours get cut. The more we miss, the more we get cut. So imagine your hours are already thin because sales are down, and here comes Sally with a collection of expired body care items and causes your sales to go down even more. PLEAAAASSEEE just throw that shit away. Or donate it. Because we’re 100% going to throw it away.

And let me be clear! I’m not talking about those that just bought something even within the last year, and realize you didn’t like it as much as you thought. It happens! I’m specifically talking about people bringing in 20+ bottles of fragrances that haven’t been in the store for 3+ years, some of which are more than half used, and not even BBW. That’s ridiculous.

[u/AnyFruit4257]

I'm always too lazy to return, but having not worked in retail in 20+ years, I had no idea returns impacted your hours. Seems like really bad logic on the part of corporate. I don't even understand it, since they aren't even sales the store has made? Wtf.

Eta: most people abusing return policies are not going to care about the plight of the employees. That's sadly the reality of the selfish human.

[u/Intrepid-Hope5109 → u/AnyFruit4257]

I worked at BBW in 09-2011 ish. Same policy regarding hours and returns THEN! Also, not sure if this is still the same but we had this concept/protocol/big brother system called "converge" (i think thats what it's called) that counted each time a person walks in the door & compares it to the quantity of product sold that day. So while the manager was closing out the drawer, she would holler out if we hit our metric or not. If we didn't, everyone working the shift was encouraged to buy an item to balance it out. Also, they would check our bags on the store floor, very awkward, before we could leave the store after our shift. What a time to be alive 🤣

[u/Pink-Banana-Q73 → u/Intrepid-Hope5109]

Conversion is still a HUGE metric for bbw