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Letter to the editor

City Life

Lessons on arrogance, egotism in return line

By SANDRA THOMPSON
Published July 10, 2004

A recent Saturday morning I was at Target to return something. The woman in front of me at the customer service counter had a carton the size of a small refrigerator in her red cart.

I don't know what it was; the carton didn't say.

Whatever it was, it was defective, the woman said. She was attractive, 40-ish, with an expensive haircut and a big diamond on her finger. She came to exchange the thing, but there weren't any on the floor. She had bought it on sale, she explained, and she wanted to leave it at the store and be given a rain check at the sale price ($89.99). Then when the thing was restocked, she could come back and buy it at the sale price. It had since gone back to full price ($99).

Do you want to return it, the young clerk asked.

No. She didn't. She wanted to exchange it, but there weren't any more on the floor.

The clerk asked if she would like her to call some other stores.

The woman said no. She wanted a rain check at the sale price. (For those of you non-Target shoppers, a rain check is a slip of paper you get when you go to the store to buy something that's advertised on sale and there aren't any left.)

That can't be done, the clerk told her.

If it weren't so big, she said, I would just take it back home or leave it in my car and come back and exchange it. Just pretend it's still in my car, but take it back and give me a rain check.

The clerk just looked at her. Apparently her job didn't require pretending large pieces of merchandise were in someone's car when they were actually back in the store.

I had already had a long time to examine the carton in front of me, and I noticed there were two big gouges in it. I couldn't imagine this woman buying the item after seeing the gouges, and she sure wouldn't have missed them. So, did that mean...?

Just give me a rain check, the woman said. She tried the "let's pretend it's in my car" routine again.

The clerk did something on the computer, which spat out a slip of paper, presumably a rain check.

This is for the full price, the customer said. It says $99. I want the sale price.

Now, I admit I am a serial returner. But I play by the rules. You don't return things you've worn. You don't insist on full price without a receipt. You know that chain discount stores have rules, and you don't expect overweening, carriage-trade service at Target. Although the service there, and at other discount stores, is awfully good.

The clerk was now paging a supervisor.

We all stood there for a minute.

I said to the clerk, "While you're waiting, could you take my return?"

She took my bag and receipt. The supervisor came over and tried something on the other computer. The computer would only print the full price, the supervisor told the customer. There was nothing she could do.

Just cross out the price and write in $89.99, the customer said.

No, she couldn't do that.

The customer took the slip and snapped, All right. I'll just return it. The supervisor did the return, gave her a receipt and disappeared fast.

The woman looked at the two slips of paper in her hand. Then she turned to the clerk who was finishing my return.

Do I need both of these, she asked, waving the slips in the clerk's face.

Okay, we all have our limits. I had been watching the big clock of the wall. I had had time to contemplate how much this woman's garbanzo bean size diamond was worth on the open market, how much her haircut cost and what kind of expensive SUV she would hop into in the parking lot. Ms. It's-All-About-Me had wasted 15 minutes of my Saturday morning, not to mention the minutes or hours or days taken off my life as the result of the stress of occupying the same space as her. I turned to her. "Would you please let her finish with me?" I asked. It wasn't really a question.

She turned to face me directly.

"I was here before you," she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

- Sandra Thompson, a writer living in Tampa, can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com City Life appears on Saturday.

[Last modified July 9, 2004, 23:55:18]