The refill policy is probably my biggest pet peeve at work. My store is located in a large business area of town (office workers, government employees, military, PR people, etc.) & we are packed with all walks of business life all morning long. The store itself is located on the ground floor of a large hi-rise (one of the many that line the entire street) that contains office upon office. Needless to say the people that come in during peak are very serious about their morning caffeine fix. Since we have so many that come in ordering regular brewed coffee with their Gold Card & many of them work right around our store, they will come back 4 or 5 times throughout the day to get a refill. Considering how local our customer base is, we have been VERY lenient on our refill policy. I'm sure most of them don't even know the specifics of the actual policy. But recently our higher-ups have frowned upon the ridiculous number of refills that we hand out each day, so we've been trying to enforce some guidelines. While reminding them that this has always been part of the policy, we have requested that customers have to bring back either their cup or a receipt from the same day in order to receive the refill price. We gave plenty of notice to customers about having to "crack down" on the policy & many of them have been abiding by our guidelines. But without fail we regularly get customers who come in with the "Oops... I forgot my cup/receipt!" line or those who just act ignorant of any refill policy & demand a refill. And do you really think "Just Say Yes" Starbucks is going to say no? LOL I usually don't care either way, especially if I saw the customer earlier in the day with my own two eyes.
BUT the one thing I will never understand is this:
On a daily basis we get REGULAR (cheap-****) customers who ONLY purchase brewed coffee because they are not "frou-frou" enough for lattes. That's fine with me. Drink whatever you want, I don't care. But do NOT come into our store right at opening time (5:30am for us) before any other place in the area is open & tell me that you're "back" for your "refill." I am usually the opening shift, so I usually know when those customers are full of ****. It happens throughout the day, not only right at opening time. We constantly have customers come in after saving their grimy used cup overnight because they are too cheap to pay $2 for their first cup of coffee. I understand the "Just Say Yes" policy in a lot of situations, but is it really okay to condone lying? And that is exactly what we have been doing since we have gotten so lenient on the refill policy in the first place. I always want to say something to these icky customers, but I've always held my tongue because I'm not sure of the right way to go about it.
Should I say anything at all? Advice???