Raiding a liquor store's backroom....am I in the wrong here?

[BigBoldBully]

But putting what you planned to do with the bottles aside, I find the divided opinions about whether you were wrong to access them with permission from the "customer service manager" fascinating. I suspect some opinions might change if we were able to view a video of the interactions and also hear exactly what was said and how it was said. Maybe you would come across as reasonable and not nearly so aggressive as many assume. Or maybe we would watch in disgust as, having waited for the perfect day to pounce, you intimidate the hapless fill-in manager into acquiescing to your rooting through the drawers of a private office until finally, under a stack of confidential employee files and suggestively titled surveillance tapes, you come across what you're after. :cool:

[Special Reserve]

When you have to ask...

[dmarkle]

Definitely agree with Eric on it being shady on all sides.

I think the salient question now is do you return the bottles? If it were me and the manager had a remotely civil conversation about it, I definitely would have, but then again I would never have gone into his office; if they were merely in the warehouse section of the back room that's one thing, but in a private office -- that's another. But I also think the man dumped poison into the well of your relationship, acting as if you actually walked away with full-on stolen goods and turning the negativity dial to 11.

That being said, I totally get how mad the manager must be. He actually went out of his way to save those bottles for someone else, has probably told them, "Hey Frank I have your bottle reserved for you in my office, come on and pick it up!" And now he has to have That Conversation with his customer, which is a painful place to be. Maybe the right thing to do is return the bottles with instructions that they go back into the office of the Wine and Spirits manager. You don't even have to talk to the guy if you don't want to.

[Josh]

When you have to ask...

Not trying to be confrontational but just curious. Have you ever asked about anything in the back of a store, Will? I thought that was dusty hunter SOP.

[GaryT]

I've asked to "look in the back" on a few occasions (typically dusty hunting), and when declined I am very gracious; and when allowed, I am extremely polite. I don't see any issue with asking. If I find something, I'll ask them if it is for sale (I never assume it is, as others have posted - there is a difference between what is on the shelf and in the back). I've called stores who found items "in the back" and held for me, just to find out when I got there that it was being held for someone else. Sometimes they've then refused to sell it to me, and I often refuse to shop there again (not because I don't understand that they hold items, but that their process should be setup to avoid me wasting a trip there because they couldn't label/sort effectively). Other times they've sold me the bottle, and hinted that they would have to apologize to someone else for their mistake.

In this case, I think the first employee screwed up; they should never let a customer back there (and when bottles were found, they should have not sold them until they checked). The manager also handled it poorly; lashing out at a customer for something their employee did is just stupid IMHO. If the manager hadn't been a jerk, I would have gone with Cam's suggestion and offered to return them - but seeing how he acted, I would just write them off as a poorly run place that doesn't need my business.

[PaulO]

The radio program Car Talk once had a segment that they re-ran several times. The theme was how two people together could be more dumb together than by themselves. I'm not calling anyone dumb, but this whole scenario only happened because each person involved pushed things a little farther than normal.

The service manager agreed to take the OP into the back of the store. I'm surprised this was allowed. The service manager should have just looked by themself. The OP could have written a note what he wanted. When the two together found bottles in the office, I'm sure the OP had to know the liquor manager had other plans for them. We can't assume the customer service manager knows or cares anything about bourbon, but they too should have realized the bottles were hidden for a reason.

The liquor manager was out of line in his reaction. Taking it out on the customer was wrong. I think he has to bite the bullet this time, train the other employees, and get a better hiding place. Given that he didn't say anything along the lines of "Oh I was saving that for someone who ..." makes me wonder if he wasn't sending them to some secondary market.

It all makes me glad that most of what I like is readily available and not too expensive. :grin:

Edited December 20, 2014 by PaulO

[garbanzobean]

I think Squire made an astute observation that this is potentially an overarching turf war between managers. I've run into situations where one manager has no idea that another is holding something for clients, or is in fact tired of seeing said manager holding coveted bottles for friends that barely shop there.

Speculation aside, we have these key issues: Weird or not, OP had permission to do what he did from A manager. Spirits manager got mad and reacted poorly. My reaction remains the same: OP can return said items if he so chooses and I recommend he does, but is not obligated to do so in the least.

[Vosgar]

asking to check out the backroom - fine

finding something in the backroom and asking if it's for sale - fine

taking something from a private office without that person's permission - no way to justify it

[squire]

Is this identifiably a private office or just a small storeroom with a desk in the corner?

[ccleve23]

I have no issue with what you did. If they let you in the back it is on them. Now as for returning the bottles because they were promised to someone else, I woul but that is just me. Good karma and all.

[Balchinian]

Just a thought.... Any chance those bottles, located in a locked office, were already PAID FOR and awaiting shipment or pickup by another customer? Could they have been part of the beverage manager's personal collection he brought into his office for unknown reasons? Probably not the case, but it doesn't sound like the OP had all the facts prior to deciding to purchase ALL the bottles. There was a REASON they were not on the sales floor, and it was pure speculation on the part of the OP to believe they were being hoarded.

It it is my personal opinion that the customer is not ALWAYS right. It may be best business practice to have such a philosophy, but I believe an owner (or manager under authority of said owner) has a right to run their business as they see fit. If customers don't like the business model, they take their business elsewhere and eventually, if enough customers leave, the business fails. We have the RIGHT to choose where we spend our money. We do not have the RIGHT to tell a business how to run their company and demand to be treated a certain way.

My 3 cents...

[dementedavenger]

Wow. The sense of entitlement you displayed is mind blowing. MIND BLOWING.

You don't have a clue what the wine/spirits manager's responsibilities entail and whether he can restrict inventory or not. You're making a ton of assumptions based on what gets you what you want. You're assuming that this guy doesn't value his job and the contribution he makes to the larger enterprise. You acknowledged that it's his private office yet you went in there and took inventory!? What on earth were you thinking?

Get a grip and flip the script. You just effed with this guy's job and you don't even care. All you care about is a bottle of bourbon. You're a child. It's ridiculous that anyone could defend this guy's actions. RIDICULOUS.

[dementedavenger]

Lol. I'm the state/federal auditor for the city. Pretty sure I'm not going to arrested for looking in a storeroom with permission from the on site customer services manager.

[WhiskyRI]

Not too pile on but wow, just wow. Those bottles were being saved for someone. That someone could be you someday. Personally I'd take the bottles back to the manager, apologize, and return them so he can deliver on promises. What comes around goes around. I personally have been the beneficiary of leftover special bottles because of the relationships I've cultivated. You'll get far more credit, respect and whisky by helping people out and not being a douchebag. Think about the poor schmoe who let you into the office - you not only embarrassed a manager who made promises to customers, you made an employee get chewed out and as many as three people, possibly more if those bottles were gifts, are now dissapointed.

And not to burst your bubble but spending $500 a year at a store doesn't make you an especially good customer. It may make you a regular but that is roughly one bottle of sub $50 bourbon a month. These days unless you are spending $5,000 or more a year at store you can't really think of yourself as special. And remember a lot of people by a lot of wine. I know one store where I'm one the bigger buyers of bourbon but I'm not even on the radar screen as a "good customer" because they have people who buy thousands of dollars of wine every month. That being said they are great guys and take good care of me.

To put into stark economic terms - you had a short-term gain which will have longterm costs. And once word gets around, and it always does, you may find yourself not getting any special bottles anywhere. You are definitely in the wrong (yes, the manager could have handled it much better) and I'd return the bottles and apologize as soon as practical.

[sutton]

Not trying to be confrontational but just curious. Have you ever asked about anything in the back of a store, Will? I thought that was dusty hunter SOP.

Edited December 21, 2014 by sutton

[jvd99]

There appear to be a lot of unknowns, at the time the OP was in the store, that make it difficult to quantify whether what he did was right or wrong. And right and wrong can be viewed from a subjective or objective point of view. From an objective point of view, he did not do anything wrong by asking to see the "back room," looking in the back with permission by a person in management, and purchasing the bottles with permission of a person in management. Based on what we know after the fact, i.e., that the spirits manager, while chewing out the OP, did not say that the bottles were already spoken for, I do not see that he did anything objectively wrong.

That being said, I subjectively feel what took place was wrong and not something I would have done personally. When the back room turned out to be someone's locked office, things get real murky for me. An office, especially a locked one, is a person's personal space and is vastly different than a storeroom. A private and locked office is generally a workspace occupied by one person, whereas a storeroom is probably accessible to most every employee and is more of a public space within the business. The OP even stated that the office was locked to prevent the public from wandering in, and the OP was most definitely part of the public sought to be excluded from that area. The bottles in question were in the private office for a reason, and that reason was unknown to the OP. As anyone on SB knows, the FRsiB is an allocated item, and that store may have only received 3 bottles, all of which the OP apparently bought in one fell swoop. With that knowledge, it not unreasonable for the OP to have assumed (and as others suggested above), that the bottles may have been paid for already, waiting for shipping, reserved for someone who got in contact with the spirits manager before the OP, waiting for a lottery, could have been the spirits manager's personal bottles owned by him, etc. Whether any of those possibilities ended up being true after the fact is irrelevant, because the OP had had no knowledge that those possibilities were not true when he removed the bottles. Blaming the spirits manager for not labeling the bottles is a non-starter IMO because he surely had an expectation that his office would not be raided by the public. When I first read the OP's post, my initial reaction was that he should not have taken anything out of the office without permission from the spirits manager. The better course of action would have been to inventory what was in the office, say thank you to the Employee #1 who let him in, and then contact the spirits manager the next day and ask him if the bottles were available for sale.

I agree that some of the blame lies with Employee #1 because he should have known better than to let the bottles leave the office and then be sold without permission from the custodian of the bottles, the spirits manager. Employee #1 could have easily called the spirits manager even though he was off work, or asked the OP to come back the next day. Some of the blame lies with the OP because he probably should have obtained permission from the spirits manager prior to removing and buying the bottles with little or no knowledge of why they were in the locked office. I also feel that the spirit's manager's reaction was inappropriate, however, I would be pissed if someone walked in off the street and rooted through my office as well. If it turned out that the bottles truly were not spoken for in any meaningful way, as it appears to be because the OP did not inform us of any such scenario, the spirits manager should have handled the situation internally instead of going off on the customer.

What I find irrelevant is how much money the OP spent at the store or how frequently he shopped there. I also find it irrelevant that the store was not a mom & pop operation. Large stores are just as entitled to allocate bottles as they see fit.

This type of situation highlights the extent of the bourbon craze and the lengths people will go to get limited edition bottles. No wonder store owners are so fed up with us.

EDIT: added a missing word

Edited December 21, 2014 by jvd99

[Josh]

Well, I'm fed up with most store owners so the feeling is mutual.

[393foureyedfox]

Blaming the spirits manager for not labeling the bottles is a non-starter IMO because he surely had an expectation that his office would not be raided by the public.

that pretty much sums it all up. If its something locked away in someones private personal area, anyone over five years old should know what is implied. maybe the manager should have licked them to mark them in an accepted childish manner......or maybe he shouldnt have said anything to the OP, but taken an empty special edition bottle,fill it with urine and caramel color, and sit it back on his desk and let karma take care of it for him the next time you came in.

seriously though, I hope the OP is learning that 95% of us think he is wrong, and why....so he learns from his mistake

Edited December 21, 2014 by 393foureyedfox

[nd2005]

seriously though, I hope the OP is learning that 95% of us think he is wrong, and why....so he learns from his mistake

OP is the same one who posted a car pic with a case each of Handy, Stagg, and ER17...and was talking about his plans to trade/sell the 4R bottles. So I'm guessing he doesn't give a flying *** what the people who said he was in the wrong think. He was clearly coming here in hopes of getting told what he wanted to hear.

[garbanzobean]

There appears to be something of a correlation between time of posts and virulent language of posts. On a forum celebrating bourbon. I can't think why that might be . . .

[TunnelTiger]

seriously though, I hope the OP is learning that 95% of us think he is wrong, and why....so he learns from his mistake

It may mean I miss a bottle from time to time but if the owner is not present when I visit my primary stores I don't even ask for the LE's, even if their spouses are working at that time.

I know that both owners have a few customers like myself that want these and they both get limited bottles so I assume they know who they are holding them for and will wait until I can speak with them directly even if they have called and left me a message that a bottle is waiting.

May not be the best approach but just the way I do it.

[jvd99]

Well, I'm fed up with most store owners so the feeling is mutual.

Agreed, but the reality is that stores are called hundreds of times per day in the Fall, the stores deal with limited edition hunters that have never stepped foot in their store and never will again until Fall of next year, people clear shelves or buy anything limited they can get their hands on to the exclusion of, and with no thought of others, people bitching because they didn't get what they wanted, people camp out, form lines hundreds deep even if the store only gets a few bottles, out-of-staters are driving places chasing the releases, people follow trucks from the distributor and pester the employees as soon as it pulls in the loading dock, and now, because of knuckle-heads like the OP, store owners are supposed to lock their personal offices and throw away the key if they aren't sitting behind their own desk? It's all just stupid and I don't blame store owners for being jerky about it, and for what, maybe 10, 20, 30 bottles total that they were allocated. I'm sure stores would rather devote all of time spent dealing with LE hunters to moving other product in quantities that actually means something to their business. I can certainly understand that store owners don't want to deal with all that BS for so little in return. Unfortunately, everyone has to bear their indignation caused by the crazed masses.

[Josh]

I would love to have people calling constantly and lining up to give me money.

[jvd99]

But if those lines and money only represent a miniscule fraction of your gross sales, would it really be worth the trouble?

[Josh]

If it wasn't worth it, then I wouldn't sell it.