Or
For backstory, there is an fabulous charity bookshop a few towns over which offers a fifty percent discount for teachers. I am enormously grateful for this place: I teach secondary English/English Literature and strongly believe kids need to read more than just their set class novel once a semester and maybe the odd Diary of a bloody Wimpy Kid book. Unfortunately, the school library is pretty limited in budget and hence resources, particularly for more capable readers and so I have set up my own mini classroom lending library, stocked mostly from jumble sales and charity shops.
This particular charity shop sells YA and adult fiction at £4 each, or ten for £30. With the teacher discount, a bulk lot of ten books is £15 and I usually go in once a term or so to refresh the class library. When I arrived today there was a huge sign out the front saying "50% OFF ALL BOOKS". I am certainly not CF enough to think I should get that fifty percent on top of my usual fifty percent, so I basically thought to myself "Cool, everyone gets the discount this weekend," and assumed it just wouldn't affect me and proceeded as normal.
I picked out two lots of ten, which took about an hour, and fronted up to the cash register to pay my £30. The girl on the till, however, insisted it was £40, because everything was 50% off and so the bulk lot pricing wasn't in effect today (although there were still signs up everywhere promoting it). I tried to explain that this actually meant she was charging me more than I would have paid yesterday or would pay tomorrow, which is a bit much when it's supposed to be a sale, and she got a bit snippy and eye-rolly and tried to imply that I was asking for the fifty percent off on top of fifty percent teacher discount--which I was not and I clarified that. She then shrugged her shoulders and said "So are you paying or not?" I was a bit flustered by this point, and embarrassed as she was definitely speaking loudly for the benefit of the other customers in line as if I was being a CF, so I ended up plunking down the extra ten quid and scuttling off.
I accept that that was my choice and my reaction under pressure, and I could have decided to put them all back and come back tomorrow when the "sale" was over, so I'm just considering the ten pounds as a donation to [name of charity].
My question is: would I be unreasonable to send a very polite email to the bookshop manager (who isn't in on a weekend, it was just this girl who I accept was just sticking to whatever policy she had been told) and asking them to consider sticking up a couple of A4 signs on these sale days to state that the bulk pricing is off for the day, so people don't just get it landed on them at the till? Or should I just put up and shut up since it's a charity?
I definitely don't expect them to take any action in terms of the money I paid this time, but I guess I would just like some acknowledgment that I wasn't totally mental for me to assume a sale wouldn't result in my paying a third more than at any other time. While the ten pounds isn't nothing on a teacher's salary (and means some exercise books I need to buy for kids who have run out will need to wait another week) it was really the girl's attitude that rankled. She was carrying on as if I was being greedy/taking advantage by just wanting to pay my normal price, when from my perspective I have to budget really carefully to pay out of my pocket for resources for my students. If she'd said "Oh gosh, I see your point, that is a bit weird, but I'm really sorry, I've been told I can only price the books individually today, what would you like to do?" I would probably feel much better about it all.
So: say something? Or shut up?