Sign of the times

I once got into an argument with a convenience store manager over a poorly composed sign.
It said "(an extremely popular soda I won't name)12 packs $2 for 5" in big plastic letters and numbers.

At first glance, I thought, "Wow, what a deal!" I was living with someone who drank at least two cans of that crap a day (yuck!) and regular price for it was normally more than two dollars for just one pack.

Without thinking, I asked the manager if there was a limit on the deal. She said that there was a limit of four packs.
That didn't add up. How could you only buy four packs if the deal was "$2 for 5?" Would that be $1.60? Thinking about it caused me to divide out the per-pack price, and I arrived at the figure of 40¢ a 12-pack of soda.
That's when I realized... duh... there was no way they were going to sell 5 packs for $2.00. That would take them below wholesale cost.
All of that happened in the space of about ten seconds... I walked up to the sign, saw it, spoke to the manager, did the math, and hit the duh-factor head-on. You could see it on my face. Well, that, and momentary disappointment.

I told the manager she should move her dollar sign if she wanted her sign to read correctly so that someone wouldn't insist on getting five for two dollars after misunderstanding her intent. She had a royal stinking fit.
She said "It's in plain English, two for five dollars, and if you can't read it, you need to go back to school."

That was the problem. It wasn't "plain English, two for five dollars." If it had been, I would not have become confused in the first place. The incorrect placement of the dollar sign had initially caused me to believe that the soda was selling at a fabulous (for me) price.
To show the manager the confusing error, I tried holding a piece of paper over the parts of the sentence, isolating the "$2" from the "for 5." I explained that I wanted her to have a chance to fix it before some jerk came along and tried to actually demand the deal as written.

An employee who was nearby got the point I was making and mentioned that the sign would be accurate if the dollar sign were in front of the 5, but was not with the dollar sign in front of the 2.

The manager became belligerent, and told me I couldn't have "the $2 deal" and insisted "that's not what the sign says."

I hadn't asked her for that, and wasn't trying to obtain it. I was simply trying to help prevent the next person from being confused as I had been. However, the manager was so focused on being defensive that she did not have room in her mind to listen to what I was saying.

The end of the discussion boiled down to her argument that she shouldn't have to use correct placement of signs and symbols as long as they were somewhere in the message, and she felt that people should know what she meant and act accordingly even though she had failed to communicate it.

She further defended her right to not correct the error, while simultaneously maintaining that it was not a miscommunication, and anyone who read the sign "$2 for 5" as "two dollars for five," as it said, instead of "two for five dollars," as she intended, was an idiot. With that, she forbade the employee to even touch the sign, demanded that I pay for my goods (I hadn't picked anything up yet) and leave, and stormed off into her office. I was more than slightly insulted by her attitude, and especially by the unwarranted insinuation that I was trying to get an unfair deal out of her.

Outside, on the way back to my car, I came across a couple of very loud, very redneck moms with a bunch of rowdy teens. I said, "I bet they drink their weight in (same extremely popular soda) in the summer." 
One mom said, "Only every day," and laughed.


I said, "There's a sign inside that says twelve packs are selling at two dollars for five. You should check it out."

The two moms exchanged a look and immediately rushed toward the door. So did the guy who had just gotten out of the car next to mine. I just smiled as I got into my car and headed down the street to get my gas and coffee somewhere else. I figure if she doesn't know enough to put the dollar sign in the right place, she probably also doesn't know about the loophole in the false advertising law that says she doesn't have to honor an advertising mistake that lists a price which could not reasonably be expected to be correct, and even if she did, she wouldn't be able to think of it while arguing with three different angry shoppers.

Lesson to retailers: When a customer tries to be helpful instead of taking advantage after finding one of your mistakes, fix the mistake instead of responding with defensiveness, indignation, and anger. That way, you avoid future confusion, and you don't make the customer angry with you.