Still another fuzzy corner of life: What can you return? We have certain conventions in our society, and while we may not have them written down and it’s possible we’ve never even thought about them, we know what they are. For the most part. If you buy twelve cans of cat food, open one, and your cat runs away from home, you can return the other eleven cans — but not the one you opened. If you buy a plane ticket to Bangladesh and after arriving in July, suddenly remember you don’t like humidity, you’re not going to get your money back. If you go to the movies and don’t like the film, you probably wouldn’t ask for a refund, and besides, it’s more fun to go home and tell everyone you know that it’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen. (I personally have more than a hundred films I characterize this way.)
Our younger daughter has worked as a waitress on and off over the past five years and she occasionally tells the story of customers who order dinner, eat the entire meal, then say it was terrible and demand to have it taken off the bill. The unspoken rule, I believe, is that if there’s a problem with your food in a restaurant, you speak up after the first or second bite; in other words, if you eat it, you own it.
We bought a bag of chocolate chip cookies the other day. The cookies had the word decadent in the name, a word that is related to decay and so does not lure me the way it does others. But my wife and son assumed the cookies would be delicious. And, as if they’d just moved here from some remote mountain village that hadn’t been in touch with the outside world for centuries, they also expected the cookies to look like the picture on the package. At home, they each ate one cookie and were disappointed. My wife said, “We’re taking them back.” That’s what got me thinking. Can you return something to the store just because you don’t like it? If the expiration date is March 2002 and you noticed it after you opened the package, that’s one thing. But just because you don’t like it? I imagine myself standing on line at the customer service counter with an armload of groceries I’m unhappy with. “This soup doesn’t taste at all like the one my mother used to make. This super-moist cake has the texture of petrified wood. I drank an entire six-pack of this soft drink, and my life is still boring. Here’s my receipt.”
I suspect that my views on this matter are out of date. People return just about everything now, and why not? Television commercials announce that you can buy the car, the mattress, the refrigerator, take them home and use them for thirty days — and if you’re not completely satisfied, simply return them. No questions asked! Maybe this is the new idea, one I haven’t latched onto yet, that we’re entitled to be completely satisfied. It even extends to photo processing. You pay only for the pictures you like. Wow! If I could return all of the pictures I’ve ever taken that I was unhappy with, I could retire and buy the car, the mattress, and the refrigerator. I wish we’d had such guarantees when I was a kid, especially on the day my brand new pair of x-ray glasses arrived in the mail.
Clearly, there are things we should be able to return: a toaster that doesn’t toast, a fish tank that leaks, a table that’s missing a leg. There are also things we shouldn’t be able to return; Tylenol comes to mind. And then, there are services that really can’t be returned. (“I’m not completely satisfied with my gall bladder surgery. Please put it back.”)
But what about that big fuzzy area in between? Should you be able to return a book two weeks after you bought it? (“I never even opened it. Really.”) Toothpaste? (“It was supposed to make my teeth noticeably whiter in seven days, and I don’t notice any difference.”) Pets? (“I bought this puppy six months ago, and now look at the size of him! I didn’t pay for a dog, I paid for a puppy.”)
As with the endless number of product choices we’ve come to expect, I think this willingness to give refunds almost unconditionally is something we’re all paying for in the end. Still, given the frenzied pursuit to win over customers and make the sale, it doesn’t appear this practice is going to change anytime soon. So I wonder, what kinds of things do people feel comfortable about returning? And where do they draw the line, if there is one?
Mostly Bright Ideas 
Amiable Amiable
June 6, 2010
Another great post! I’ve heard stories of women returning dresses after wearing them for that one special occasion. Ick. I am proud not to be among that group, but it does make we wonder if the dresses in my closet have been to occasions more fun than the ones to which I’ve worn them.
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bronxboy55
June 6, 2010
I’ve heard that, too, and also about shoes. It’s probably better not to think about it.
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Mitch
June 7, 2010
Okay, going in a totally different direction, and it’s your fault, but you just can’t have an image with people who are supposedly black and have them talking about “crackers” and not have me laughing before I get to the real content, then have the content go in a totally different direction from where my mind was. Goodness! lol
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Charles Gulotta
June 7, 2010
I never even thought of that. I just think crackers is a funny word. All of the funny words are getting ruined. I used to use Afghanistan as my funny country, as in, “Let’s move to Afghanistan and not tell the kids.” Not so funny anymore.
Well, do you think I should change it to cereal? (Not as funny.) Or leave it alone? I’m thinking, leave it alone.
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bronxboy55
June 7, 2010
I also like the way the father and the children are staring straight ahead, as if to say, “We’re all out shopping for groceries. How much more exciting could it get?”
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Mitch
June 7, 2010
No, leave it alone, because I’m probably the only guy who’d pick up on it.
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wouldliketoeat
June 11, 2010
Ah-ha! I KNEW I wasn’t the only one who sat through dreadful, dire movies just so I could snark about them afterwards!
Also could you live for free if you kept taking things back after 29 days/complaining and getting free meals, etc? I think, in retrospect, my ex used to do that!
Great post though. Very funny!
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bronxboy55
June 11, 2010
I used to know a woman who had turned the practice of returning things into an art form. She could get refunds, without a receipt, on stuff she bought years ago. AND she’d have the store manager apologizing to her!
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bronxboy55
June 13, 2010
By the way, Mitch’s comments were referring to the original cartoon at the top, when it said “crackers.” I later changed it to “rice crackers” because humor loses its punch when there’s a distraction, such as the one Mitch pointed out. With any luck, “rice cracker” doesn’t have any other connotation.
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absurdoldbird
June 29, 2010
Great post!
There’s a company (which shall remain nameless) that has a catalogue and lots of real-life shops all over the UK. Their promise is that one can return anything at any time for any reason. I’ve done it, they’re very good about it. But they’ve gone downhill over the years and recently I came to the conclusion that if I were to return all the things that of theirs that now disappoint me, I’d be making Royal Mail very happy. That’s another disappointing ‘company’. Pity one can’t return stamps.
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bronxboy55
June 30, 2010
That seems like a dangerous policy, to allow returns at any time for any reason. I understand your feelings about the mail. We’re Americans living in Canada, and because most of our mail comes from the US, we have to deal with two postal systems, and customs.
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Julia Harris
July 15, 2010
so you mean you actually create the cartoons too? i feel i am being redundant to say i loved this post. teeth not being whiter, my life not being more exciting after drinking soda that promised a better tomorrow… and i love that you have more than 100 movies that are the WORST movie you’ve ever seen. superlatives are made to be wasted.
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bronxboy55
July 15, 2010
I wish I could say I draw the cartoons, but I don’t. I subscribe to a great online clip-art service called iclipart.com. I look for the right cartoon and add the dialogue and captions. Many of the cartoons in the posts are really two or three pieces of clip-art combined into one. Sometimes I find one that’s so perfect, I rewrite the post to work with the picture.
This was written in early June. I’ve seen several more worst movies since then.
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Margaret Reyes Dempsey
February 24, 2011
I never return anything because to do so would require another trip to hell. I hate stores.
Many moons ago, on the night of my bachelorette party (a very sedate affair that turned comatose when our reservations weren’t honored and we ended up in the basement of a NYC church watching an improv comedy group), one of my oldest friends bought a bottle of water from the concession stand (yes, we drank water. I did mention it was a church basement, right?), took a sip, decided she didn’t like the taste of that brand of water, and tried to return it to some poor person who no doubt thought Allen Funt was going to walk through the door at any second. It’s a good thing my wedding day was over a week away because it took that long for my face to return to its former unscrunched expression. Needless to say, I have NEVER let her live this down. I bring it up whenever I meet new friends of hers, much like my father used to drag out the cassette tape of four-year-old Margaret singing Three Dog Night’s Joy to the World with each boyfriend I brought home over the years. Lest you feel sorry for her, she feels compelled to tell my friends about my dairy-product sharing issues. Enough said about that.
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bronxboy55
February 24, 2011
I don’t know — I think I’d like to hear about the dairy-product sharing issues. Or maybe not. I’ll trust your judgment on this one.
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Wyrd Smythe
January 25, 2013
In Los Angeles in the 80s, Tower Records would allow exchanges if you didn’t like the album.
Which, yes, meant you could buy an album you wanted, record it to cassette, take it back and get another, repeat and repeat. I had a very nice cassette collection back then.
The flip side is we dropped a bundle there and only shopped there, so their strategy was actually a good one.
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bronxboy55
January 26, 2013
You’re right: it must have been part of their strategy. (The “flip side.” Did you do that on purpose?)
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Wyrd Smythe
January 26, 2013
I am absolutely claiming that I did!
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