And I agree that confusion and inconstancy with their policy (the "may" and "shall" confusion) and with their consistently or more importantly not consistently enforcing it, with employee training and with how much leeway each location actually gives their employees to override the "rules" was probably, I think, the primary issue here.
I am willing to give the Avis clerk some benefit of the doubt in this case that she was not perhaps singling out this man just because he was Israeli but rather that perhaps she was only trying to follow what she thought was company policy and practice and what she was trained and expected to do unless other evidence to the contrary comes to light - i.e. that she treated him differently from any other foreign car renters only because of his Israeli citizenship. But I would also care to mention that many Palestinians and other ethnically Arabs are legally Israeli citizens and carry Israeli passports so one can't necessarily assume that she assumed the customer was Jewish. Just saying.
Over the years I've worked at several big retailers- "We Be Toys" and Target and a big regional grocery store chain among them. I also managed several convenience stores for a local chain when I was in my late teens and early 20's where I learned a lot about business management, more so IMO if I had gone to college, and then later in customer service for a 3rd part benefit administrator dealing with COBRA participants, so I know a bit about the ins and outs and highs and lows of customer service.
When I worked at "We Be Toys", I was trained to work the customer service counter and especially on the "We Be Babies" side and at the baby registry side of the store. We were trained and had very strict rules to follow regarding returns and refunds, especially for those customers without receipts or gift receipts or with outdated receipts - receipts over 90 days old. And the Baby Registry returns were the absolute worst to deal with.
I can't tell you how many times I had hormonal pregnant women bring in big bags of stuff that they got gifted to them at their baby shower(s) that they didn't want and wanted to make exchanges for, for everything in their bag. And sometimes some of the stuff didn't even have any store tags or any gift receipts and or were nowhere to be found on their "We Be Babies" gift registry and sometimes it was also very evident that the baby clothes or products couldn't have possibly have been purchased at "We Be Babies" since they were not even brands or items we even stocked, or had tags from other stores on them, but they still insisted on exchanging them or getting a full store credit. I even had one woman try to exchange items that had Target or Wal-Mart tags on them for credit or exchange for full credit at "We Be Babies" and yelled at me, cursed at me for not giving her an exchange or store credit for those items because they were sort of like and similar to items on her "We Be Babies" gift registry .
But if the customer complained enough and loudly enough over a return without a receipt or gift tag or on their registry or for a product we didn't stock, that following my training and my following the "official" rules, I refused to give them, I would have to call a manager in order to resolve.
Sometimes the manager on duty would back me up and refuse the exchange but sometimes, more often than not, he or she would override me and let the customer return a product either without a receipt or old receipt or without a gift receipt and even sometimes for items we didn't even stock, obviously purchased at another retailer like Target or Wal-Mart, giving them a full retail credit (and sometimes not even for the lowest or current or sale price as was our official policy) or even an estimated credit for items we didn't even carry - as a credit - as a gift card for a future purchase.
It was all rather arbitrary and confusing and frustrating to me as an employee. If the manager over road the rules as to keep good relations with the customer - perhaps looking for getting future sales, I get that, but then to the customer I now looked like the "bad guy" or even was seen as incompetent to the customer. I had no say in the matter as my first duty was to follow the rules as I was taught and to follow, to the letter of company policy, but if a store manger decided otherwise - that was at his or her discretion and not mine. One time I couldn't get a manager to come to my register after repeated calls and for over 20 minutes of waiting, I finally gave the now even more upset customer a store credit for something that by the rules, I shouldn't have and got reprimanded and written up for it. And BTW, the customer's "thanks" to me was to call me a bitch and give me the one fingered salute as she left the store.
I was often damned if I did and damned if I didn't.
And that same manager a week later reprimanded me for not wearing the "right" type of pants. We were supposed to wear and had to provide ourselves, chino style full length pants in either kaki or black and a red collared top like a polo or golf shirt with at least 1/4 length sleeves and that at least came below the belt line. That manager said that my pants were not chinos but were black denim and that I wasn't allowed to wear that to work and would be written up if I wore them again. I told her that I had worn these very same pants to my interview and asked the HR manager if they were OK and that she had said "yes", they were fine and that I'd been wearing them to work at least 2-3 times a week with no problem or complaint. They were not black denim but were a heavier cotton twill, and identical to the kaki colored pants except for being black that I'd wore to work for the last 6n months without any complaint from her or any other manger.
I quit two weeks later.
Retail/Customer Service is tough. We used to have people returning faucets in which they had removed the “washer” that they needed for their faucet at home, rendering the return useless.
Wow. That’s a side of life I never thought of.
So many people trying to return things from other stores?
How do they stay in business accepting returns for things that weren’t even bought there?
I would be tempted to write the owners after leaving to let them know that level of corruption was going on.
Not as some kind of payback, just to feel like you reported what you should have.
I think everyone has been through the level of injustice of the pants story at work though.