TKOG Who demands what’s hers

NTKOG #179: The kind of self confident customer who, maligned by her own shoddy purchasing decisions, flies in the face of capitalism by demanding a for-free do-over.

I am: to blame for everything bad that befalls me.

I am not: a fan of the phrase “the customer is always right.” I dunno, guys. How ’bout: “the person who makes $7/hr at a soul-sucking job should be treated really, really nicely, lest they snap”?

The Scene: Not my own guilty conscience, for once. Fun fact? I don’t know that I’ve ever returned a purchase to a store. Too-baggy shirts, expired pizza dough, rancid candles — if I buy something displeasing, forget the store’s culpability: this is one emptor that should have caveated a little harder.

That said, stores do have return policies for a reason (and jacked-up profit margins for another reason entirely), so, for one week, threw aside my laziness and consumer cringing and demanded what was mine.

Return the first: Early to work one morning, picked up a pack of added-fiber toaster pastries (god isn’t that a depressing phase of life: young enough to crave Pop Tarts; old enough to legitimately angst over roughage), bit into one and realized, frig, even more cardboardy than anticipated. Quick glance at the box summed up that mystery: apparently the tarts had expired sometime around my senior year of college.

Dashing back to Walgreens, I almost lost my nerve. A middle-aged man was leaning heavily on the counter, berating the steely-faced salesclerk because the store doesn’t carry flipflops year-round. But when he finally finished, I took my turn — shuddering with mortification — and before I’d even finished explaining, the clerk gestured toward the store and told me to pick out another pack. Flaky, fibrous victory.

Return the second: CVS in Harvard Square, where I picked up a bottle of nail polished touted for its ability to dry to the touch in thirty seconds. Practically skipped home in anticipation, I was so excited. When I went home and got to paintin’, I felt like a giggly schoolgirl painting her nails with White Out in the middle of a boring chemistry lecture. Sadly, my nails also came out looking as though I’d painted ‘em with White Out.

Er, make that Bilious Salmon Out.

Few days later, ran back to CVS with my receipt and — bam, made the exchange in mere minutes. Promptly exchanging it for a bottle of black nail polish. One of the many reasons I’m largely unemployable.

Return the third: Sat alone in a local bar, ingesting a little Waugh with big dreams of a gin and ginger. When the bartender slid up a gin and tonic (blech), the whole “customer is always right” bit was so old hat with me that I didn’t even close my book before smiling sweetly: “Sorry, I asked for a gin and ginger. I’d drink this instead but, uh, I don’t have malaria.”

I got the gin and ginger because I asked for it. But I’d like to think the bartender let me keep the gin and tonic only because of my newfound self-assurance.

The Verdict: Sometimes I forget that we teach people how to treat us, every moment of every interaction. And apparently I am worth more than moldy toaster pastries and unpalatable mixers. So that’s a small check in my column of Things That Are Going Right.

Seriously, I’m not sure why it’s always such an ordeal for me to stand up for myself in front of strangers. I wouldn’t let any of my friends settle for the teensiest breath of sub-par treatment, so why am I often afraid to demand better for myself? Do y’all ever get self-assertion anxiety?

Tagged as: capitalism, courtesy, etiquette, in which i have DEMANDS goddamnit, my posts have been boozy lately but i swear i drink about the average amount for someone who never goes out (because she's too busy blogging), once for a dinner night in college i ended up spending like $25 in expired pizza dough over the course of three grocery store trips and now wish i'd demanded a refund, self-confidence, the customer is always right, they can't all be glamorous, unrelated but i keep listening to depressing music lately which is seriously harshing my writing abilities