I received a pair of lounge pants – AKA as PJ’s as a gift and they happened to be exactly the same as a pair that I already owned. No big deal exchanges are easy…right? Except these PJ’s sat unused lounging (ha!) on my dresser with tags attached for over six months. So, a couple of days ago I finally decide to take action and liberate the PJ’s from their doomed existence of living a life unused.
I read over the gift tag and they were purchased from Mark’s and stated clearly on the receipt they offer a generous 100 day return policy. So… It’s been closer to 200 days. What the hell, I’ll bring them back anyway and see if they will at least offer an exchange. For any of you that have worked in retail… Really, I’m going to be that guy, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
So I pack up the kids in the Bike trailer and proceed to the closest Mark’s location which happens to be a short 6K away. We arrive, I pick out a 3/PK of socks, you can always use more socks. I proceed to the counter and present the manager with my exchange. I spared him any of the lame excuses that might come up regarding the fact that this exchange is well past their 100 Day policy. I just simply stated “No worries if you can’t, but I would appreciate it if you could.” The manager stated that this was WAY past the 100 days but he would go ahead and process the exchange anyway.
The manager then asked if I would like to donate to Kidsport – the standard donation at the end of your transaction question. Considering that I wasn’t using the pants and the manager didn’t have to process the return. I told him to just take the difference between the socks and the pants and donate the amount to Kidsport. The difference was around $14. The manager was grateful and thanked me for the generous donation. IMO this was more of a win-win than me doing anything extraordinary.
H my oldest boy asked what I was doing – a standard question that any 4 year-old would ask possible several hundred times a day hour. I quickly told him that I was donating the extra money to Kidsport so that other little guys could play sports.
As our donation was over $2, the manager offered a small gift to the kids (on behalf of kidsport). The choices were a small foam baseball, football or a hockey puck. Kids get excited when they get stuff, especially toys. L my youngest boy was quick to grab the baseball and it was done. H my oldest made his selection as well but pondered it a bit longer, but finally decided on the football and then we thanked the Manager and left.
It was all good until we got outside. H my oldest said “Dad, I don’t want this ball”. I immediately thought that he just wanted to pick a different one. I asked him “Why? Don’t you like the football… Look it’s pretty cool.” I proceeded to toss it around in hopes of somehow making it look as cool as I stated. H proceeded to say “No, I want to give it back to the man. I already have too many balls” What’s going on here, Kids don’t easily just give up stuff, especially toys. I asked H “Do you want to donate the ball so another little boy can play with it?” He quickly said “Yes.”
So we went back inside and H waited patiently at the counter for the manager and when the manager approached he slowly said “Hi, Mr.Man I would like to donate this ball.” The Mark’s manager was clearly appreciative of the fact that H was giving back his ball so that another little boy could enjoy it. He thanked H this time for the donation and we were on our way. What a great thing for a 4 year-old to do and definitely a proud father moment for me.
I’m not certain that H knew exactly what was going on but as the cliché goes – Children are like sponges. Good or bad these little guys learn more than you realize from the actions that you make.