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).

[Doomonyou]

I do that with SUV's.

[Hound of the Baskervilles]

Posted by nmh to Hound of the Baskervilles On General/Chat 08/10/2006 4:27:36 PM CDT · 59 of 61 "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!"

I am on your side! I worked stocking shelves for a department store and doing inventory. It takes very little time to put a handful of widgets on a shelf. I thing the person who pulled this prank is the one who lost on the deal because he paid for something he never used. It is crazy actually. The store got his money, he got nothing.

[HairOfTheDog]

Boy, this is right up there with calling them on the phone and asking if they have Prince Albert in a can.

[SamAdams76]

File under "Did I really post that?"

Thank you for all the responses! It was very enlightening.

Any yes, those refrigerator magnets are still sitting in that convenience store. Now I've shifted my attention to buying out the supply of classic Duncan Yo-Yos.