Buying strange things until the store restocks and then buy them no more

[SamAdams76]

Here is something I like to do and I wonder if anybody else is on the same page.

I'll go into one of those convenience stores, especially a mom-and-pop convenience store, and I'll buy multiple quantities of some stupid dust-covered knick-knack type thing that this store might sell two or three of in a given year.

After two or three visits, I'll have this item completely cleaned out of the store. Then the store will inevitably buy a whole bunch of this stuff, thinking that this item is suddenly in demand. But once this happens, I'll never buy another one of those items again.

Case in point is the item you see on the left here. Now a convenience store in my area actually stocked about 7 of these items - useless refrigerator magnets that nobody would ever buy. What were they thinking?

So one day, I bought one of them. Then the next day (when there was a different clerk), I bought another. Then I sent my sister in to buy another one and then I sent in my son to buy one. Just so the clerks wouldn't think it was the same person buying them and thus think that these silly refrigerator magnets were suddenly in demand.

Then late one Saturday, after maybe one too many margaritas at the local Mexican restaurant, I went in there and cleaned them completely out.

Then I waited. Each time I went in there, I'd look in that aisle to see if they restocked. About a month and a half later, sure enough, there were about 15 of these items back on the shelf! They actually had them on two hooks instead of one!

I never bought another one of these stupid things again. But I wasn't content to just let those 15 packages of stupid refrigerator magnets just sit there. No!

What I started doing was bringing these refrigerator magnets back into the store, one by one. (You didn't think I actually used them did you?).

I'd walk into the store to buy a Propel or a newspaper or something like that and I'd surreptitiously slip these stupid magnets back onto the shelf. So instead of 15 of these things sitting on the shelf, they now have 22.

And there are some convenience store clerks in my neighborhood shaking their heads.

I have done this with several items over the years including erasers, plastic rulers and those inserts that people buy for their wallets (that hold pictures).

[JennysCool]

Sam, ignore the humorless nay-sayers. I have a great love-hate relationship with the Pakistani guy who runs the local convenience store. This would be the perfect prank to play on him. And if he got wise to it, it would still, in some small way, absolutely make his day.

Genius, sir!

[spokeshave]

Ha....I used to set all the mousetraps in a Woolworths store.....

[Mark]

An intoxicated "Mel" moment here?

[builder]

I wasted 60 seconds of my life trying to figure out why anybody would engage in this behavior.Good luck to you in the future,you will need it.[Karma, dude]

[Slings and Arrows]

Frankly, you sound like a bit of a jerk.

[Allegra]

I sometimes wonder what drives people to want to annoy or irriate other people who have done them no harm. I've never understood the motivation for things like that.

Perhaps you can enlighten me?

[Slings and Arrows]

Beats my pair of jacks. I save my venom for the people who really piss me off.

[Allegra]

ROFL on the Green Helmet Guy site!

[Slings and Arrows]

Thank you very much! G-d, I'm having fun!

[Larry Lucido]

So you paid $2.99 each for 7 items the store bought for 25 cents each. The store bought 14 more.

The store gets about $21.00, and spent about $3.00. And got all their inventory back.

Yep, you showed them.

[GOP_Thug_Mom]

I LOVE the GHG site!!! freepers are awesome, I tell ya!!

[Slings and Arrows]

Thanks much, and they sure are!

[sully777]

Sam Sam Sam...good to see you again. I haven't seen you since the blizzard threads from the winter.

[grey_whiskers]

It would mess up with groups/companies who measure sales in stores trying to figure out optimal supply amounts and price points.

Tee hee.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Why would you do this and why would any sane person go along with you?

[chapin2500]

[Still Thinking]

That's just mean and dumb (and slightly funny).

[Hound of the Baskervilles]

See post 50

[nmh]

Do you really believe that people work for FREE?

A PHYSICAL inventory doesn't happen?

Do you have ANY respect for the time of others?

Don't you think it would be better for the owner to sell something ONCE, pay the clerk ONCE for selling the item and NOT have in their PHYSICAL inventory not PAPERWORK for the RETURN?

Just WHERE did you go to school? Have you NO understanding of how a business is run and the COSTS involved? This childish stuff eats in the PROFIT of the small business. I'm thoroughly disgusted that an ADULT would lower themselves to this idiotic behavior!

[Tijeras_Slim]

You're channeling The Other Harry aren't you?