I often find myself in situations where I am amongst people from different sets of experiences and we do not completely share an agreed upon "code" of common sense. An example of this happening is when I am at work dealing with customers who assume that I, as an employee, will do something for them, as a customer, automatically. They are making common sense assumptions based on previous experiences that they have had and that they have learned about from other people that they know.
A customer may automatically assume that I will apply all of the available coupons to their transaction, not knowing that I am not required to know all of the coupons that we have out at any given time and so I may not be aware of a coupon item in their purchase. From the customer's point of view it is only common sense that they need not do any more work than necessary, i.e. not pay attention to which items are on a coupon special and which are not. However, from an employee point of view it is not reasonable to have to memorize all of the items on coupon because we can have up to 70 items on coupon at any given time.
Even from this very small example we can see where the experiential insight of two different parties does not always match up to agree upon what is "common sense."
Your example relating to the customer and yourself shows a great idea of the confusion of common sense. I also have to deal with people trying to use many coupons and some coupons that don't even apply to the store. I being an employee would assume that the customer should know that using a coupon that applies to a specific store at a different store would not work. This happens all to often and I kindly tell the customers that we cannot expect the coupon because it is tnot the certain store. Sometimes people question me and I look at the situation and examine their background and how they act and my common sense tells me if they are reacting to harshly then I will just abide by their request and defuse the situation
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