If you’ve been following along, then you may remember a few weeks ago I had an interesting experience with a loyalty card at Bakers Delight (see Am I missing something?). Let me not recount the whole story, but just say that the shop assistants at Bakers Delight Palms have some funny ideas about how these things work. You may also recall that my workmate Pip waded in on the issue after I told her about it one quiet afternoon at work. She kindly (and hilariously) called head office and confirmed that the Palms store was indeed quite mistaken about how the loyalty card system worked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, armed with the email from Head Office, I braved the bread shop once more. I just wanted to redeem my stamps for a free loaf of bread. Sue was working. I was pleased about this, since we now had a history of loyalty card discussions. We started with the usual routine:

Sue: “You’ll need to spend $6 to redeem your free item”.

Me: “But I’ve collected all my stamps, I’m ready for my free bread now”.

Sue: “It’s store policy”.

Now I tried to be as nice as possible about this next bit. It was christmas eve, and I do understand that Sue isn’t in charge of store policy. But I felt ripped off. I pulled out the email and Sue and I read it together carefully.

“You’re right”, she said. “You get the bread for free. Can I show this email to my boss?”.

“You can keep it”, I said generously. “Thanks so much for the bread, and merry christmas!”.

Okay, so I didn’t really wish her a merry christmas, not my style at all, but you get the idea…I left happy (with my free loaf of white block toast slice).