The woman had an unwilling look on her face when she heard this.
She had heard the rumours about this manager and had worked with him before after all.
But since they were in public and he was the manager on duty, she had no choice but to follow his orders.
She handed the item over and the manager took it in one hand. The manager raised the item up in front of his eyes and carefully looked at it without saying a thing.
After a long period of silence, the manager suddenly put the item down and then he turned…to look right at the woman behind the counter.
He narrowed his eyes and said, "This is indeed a fake item. What did you do with the real item?"
As soon as he said this, the large man revealed a smile, the crowd revealed surprise expressions, and the woman revealed a shocked look.
The woman opened her mouth and stammered, "I, I, I…" But in the end, she wasn't able to form a single complete sentence.
The manager gave a cold snort before ignoring the woman and saying to the large man, "This customer, I apologize for the inconvenience that you've suffered today. I hope that this mistake from one single employee will not ruin your impression of our business."
After saying this, he turned back to the woman and said, "You will return the real item and you will be punished for this mistake."
Before that woman could say a thing, the guards that had come over already moved to her side. The manager gave a nod to the guards and they took her away.
But at the same time, the guards also moved over to where the large man was.
The large man saw this and said, "What is this? What are you doing?"
The manager said with a smile, "I'm sorry for doing this, but since you have created a commotion in our store, I have no choice but to ask you to leave for today. You are free to come back another day and we will be happy to do business with you, but you need to leave today."
The large man wanted to break free, but the guards were just too strong for him.
So in the end, he had no choice but to leave the store being escorted by them.
As they were leaving, the manager followed closely behind them as if to make sure that the large man was properly escorted out.
Then once he was gone, the manager came back and gave another bow to everyone before saying, "I'd like to apologize for the commotion and I hope that everyone will forgive us. As an apology, I'd like to offer everyone here a 10% discount on your next purchase."
Hearing this, the crowd's expression relaxed. While no one said a thing in response to this, it was clear by their expression that they were very happy with the settlement that the manager had given them.
It didn't take long before everyone went back to their shopping.
Seeing this, the manager revealed a smile that no one could see through and then went back to where he had been sitting before.
Once he was gone, I couldn't help knitting my brows.
But I didn't let it show on my face for long since we had taken off our hoods when we came into the store. I didn't want anyone to see this, so I quickly changed my expression and revealed a calm look.
However, the two beside me both had excited looks because they had heard what the manager had said.
10% off!
While it was only 10%, for their order, it was not a small amount!
This was definitely better than anything that they would get if they negotiated with any other companies.
So both of them looked at me with excited looks, as if they were telling me that we should buy from this place.
However, I wasn't moved as easily as these two.
I shook my head and then signaled for them to follow me out.
When we finally reached the alley where the carriage was waiting and we got in the carriage, both of them asked, "Why didn't you take advantage of that? It was a full 10% off!"
I shook my head again and said, "We can buy from any place other than that place."
Both of them revealed confused looks at first, but it was Nicole who reacted first by saying, "I know that you feel bad about what happened, but we can't just not take advantage of this because of emotions. It was the clerk's fault in the first place, so we shouldn't not take advantage of this situation." After a pause, she added, "It was a good thing that I told the guards that we would be back as we left so they will remember to give us a 10% discount if we buy from them."
But I still shook my head before saying, "It wasn't the clerk's fault."
Nicole looked at me with a confused look before saying, "My lord, I know that…"
I raised my hand to cut her off before saying, "It was all an act put on by the manager."
"Huh?" Both of the girls replied with this confused expression.
I slowly explained, "The thug that accused the clerk was someone that was hired by the manager. When he was being dragged out by the guards, the manager slipped something into the thug's pockets which should be his payment. At the same time, the manager took the "fake" product for himself."
"Huh?" Both of the girls said this once again after hearing this.
But then Nicole couldn't help asking, "But that would mean a loss for the store though, so why would he do that? It would just get him in trouble."
I revealed a faint smile as I said, "That's because it would raise his reputation as the one who easily solved this problem. Even if the store suffers a loss, the reputation that he gains from it is more than enough to balance it out."