Lessons Learned
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
Today I stood up for myself.
I know that for most people, if something isn’t right, they let people know. And they get it made right. Pronto.
I don’t do that, generally. If I disagree with my husband or my children, I make sure they know it. But anyone else, no way. I do not stand up for myself to strangers, or to anyone outside of my small family of 6. Not even my parents or in-laws. I also do not return things to stores or send back meals at restaurants. I suck it up. Today I gathered up all my courage and stood up for myself.
This week, one of my children came home from school wearing his indoor shoes.
“Why are you wearing those?” I asked him, ready to reiterate the lecture on what having INDOOR shoes for school is all about.
“My teacher made me bring them home - they are broken.”
And so they were. After a mere 4 days of school. Indoor school wear.
Typically, we do not spend more than $20 on runners, and this has never been a problem. My kids aren’t hard on shoes and they last a long time, usually. These shoes that I type of now, well, they were of the ‘over $20′ variety, but since the boy liked them a lot, I let him have them.
So, back to today…I packed the shoes in my bag and returned to the store to have them exchanged. I did not have my receipt, because I tend to not keep things like that around longer than a few days (what can I say, clutter bothers me). No receipt equals muchos problemas.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
I entered the store and approached the Customer Service desk. There was a bit of a line with a very unhappy baby at the front of it. I stepped up to the end from one direction and another lady stepped up behind me, almost immediately. But she didn’t stay behind me. This lady slowly crept up beside me, and eventually in front of me, her front almost pressed against the woman standing in front of us. As we came to the front of the line, I turned to her and said, “Excuse me, I was here first.”
I did not say it meanly because I wasn’t trying to be mean, and if I wasn’t in such a huge hurry, I wouldn’t have said it at all. She fought me on it, insisting that SHE was there first, and was RIGHT BEHIND the lady in front of us (no kidding) and that she was next. I apologized and said that I was in a hurry and I couldn’t let her in front of me. She huffed that that was fine and motioned for me to go ahead.
I got up to the counter with my son’s broken shoes and explained the problem. After that came all the stuff that goes along with returning things - can’t do it without a receipt, 3 pages for the shoe department to call her, waiting for them to come to the desk…eventually the CSA (Customer Service Associate) pushed me aside to wait for another pair of the shoes and took the next person in line.
The shoe associate brought another pair of the same shoes and left them with me as I waited for the CSA to help everyone else in the line. I watched the minutes tick away on the clock behind the desk, wondering if I’d be able to finish this up before needing to rush home to feed my kids lunch.
Finally, the CSA got back to me. She explained that she had to try to find the receipt in the computer or she couldn’t do the exchange. I gave her 2 credit cards and my debit card to aid in this search (FYI, they keep your information of how you paid including your card numbers in their computer system for at least a month) but not a thing came up. She asked me questions like what the exact day was that I purchased the shoes and which checkout I went through.
She told me over and over that she couldn’t do the exchange. But I didn’t take that as a final answer. I couldn’t understand what the big deal was. Here I was, standing at a counter with two pairs of shoes, identical in colour, size, brand and CLEANLINESS in front of me. The elastic cord of one shoe of one pair was broken. I would have taken just one shoe, or even the cord if that is what she was willing to give!
Feeling bold, I asked why she needed the receipt. Her answer was that returns cannot happen after 30 days. My thought was that these were school shoes, and since they still have some left on the shelves, it really couldn’t have been much longer than 30 days that they’d been stocking them. I didn’t say that out loud though.
Her computer froze, and then started working again as she typed in my card numbers, one after the other. Finally she gave up her search and called the manager. The manager told her to just give me the shoes. The CSA did so, making sure to remove the tags and warn me that I couldn’t return them again, before I walked away.
I was so happy to be done with that!
As I approached the door, the “theft” alarm went off. I think I actually laughed out loud as I turned to return to the nearest cashier so she could demagnetize the shoes. I told her I just exchanged these with no receipt, and she told me that it wasn’t the shoes. I opened the cloth shopping bag I was carrying to show her that I had library DVDs in it too, and she waved me away.
I went back to my van and apologized to Jon and the kids for the wait; I had left them in there for about half an hour waiting for this all to take place. It definitely didn’t turn out to be a “run in and exchange these” sort of event.
While I feel proud that I stood up for myself and our finances, I don’t feel good that I had to make other people have a bad day. Perhaps the line lady is grumpy now, retelling the story of the girl who cut in front of her in line, and perhaps I messed up the CSA’s day too.
Unfortunately my other son’s shoes broke this past week as well. Fortunately, he didn’t WANT me to return his. Could you imagine me trying to do 2 pair? What a nightmare.
This is not the first problem I’ve had with shoes from this store. I will never buy shoes from there again.
Other lessons I learned: be brave, pay cash and keep receipts!
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