NotSheep

After a day like yesterday, you can’t just immediately go back to normal. Too little frustration on the day after a day like yesterday, and your head could implode from the withdrawal symptoms, you know. You can’t just pull away from those sorts of stress levels cold turkey. It wouldn’t be good for you.

So today I took my dead breadmaker back to where I bought it.

Pretend for a minute that you are a store manager. You have a customer in front of you who is returning an item she bought a few months ago, an item which has stopped working. The customer does not have her receipt, but she does have the store-card bill which shows the purchase. So you know she’s someone who shops there regularly enough to have a store-card, and you know that the bill she’s got shows a total of £265.19, so she’s not just buying batteries. The manufacturer of the broken item has already offered to replace it with a new one at no cost to you or the customer. You’re not being asked for a refund. All you have to do is send the item back to the manufacturer.

What would you do?

Maybe it’s because I lived in a place where people expect good customer service, but if I was that store manager, I’d say “Of course. No problem.” I’d be thinking that the most important thing was retaining that person’s business, you see.

But I know you’re far too intelligent to think for a nanosecond that that’s what happened.

Instead, I stood there for an hour and ten minutes while the customer service person, and then the store manager, told me they couldn’t do it. Not because they thought they had no legal responsibility for it, but because they didn’t know how. They didn’t have a procedure for it. They don’t have a form to fill in for that. And when I asked what they planned to do instead, they just kept saying, in one way or another, that they didn’t know. “We don’t have any procedure to follow; we don’t usually send things back to the manufacturer without processing a refund.”

So I, thinking quickly and speaking slowly, said, “So if I came in with this item and said I wanted a refund, you’d know just what to do, and I’d get a refund?”

And they said “Yes.”

???

They would rather give me my money back than send the item back to the manufacturer (cost to them: nothing, since they already send stuff back regularly) and keep my money.

Ooooo-kay.

So now I’m the proud owner of a �66 credit on my store-card and no breadmaker.

*Shrug*

Barney casually mentioned that he thought he needed new trainers - I’ve only been trying to convince him of this for about nine months, and now he says it as if it has only just occurred to him so we got those, and new trainers for Freddy and Jack, who also had falling-to-bits footwear. Went to the healthfood place for rice cakes for Toby, and as we walked out of there, a mall security guard approached me, carrying a little girl of about four, and holding the hand of a little girl of about two. “Are these yours?” he said. Uh, yeah. I have five kids with me so the two that you’ve got must be mine too. (I suppose that must be the opposite of the line I usually get: “Are these all yours?” I’m usually tempted to reply, “Oh, no, there are more at home!”)

I did stop though, because the four-year-old was looking kind of scared, and she didn’t seem very keen on the security guard either. The little girls were lost, and apparently had been lost for some time - the security guard had had them for about five minutes, and before that they’d been seen in at least two different shops without an adult around. I thought maybe she’d be less scared of a woman, or of other kids, or that having a baby to talk to might help her. I did manage to get her to nod and shake her head to a few questions, but she wouldn’t say anything.

After four announcements over the PA system, at least 20 minutes after they were lost, their mum arrived. The two-year-old had kicked off her shoes, and the mum just said “Come on, get these shoes on”, helped her get them on, and left. Not a hug, not a word of “Thank goodness you’re safe” or “I was worried about you” or anything like that. If it had been me, I’d have been frantic and in tears after 20 minutes of my kids being lost in a shopping mall, but she didn’t seem bothered

The weirdest thing of all though, was this: Lots of people noticed they were lost but just walked past - except for one woman, who called over, “Oh, I know that one’s name” - pointing at the four-year-old - “it’s E…, and her mum’s called N…” - and then walked on!

It’s not just me, is it? If you saw a child who was lost, and you actually knew who the child was, wouldn’t you stop?

Anyway.

Apart from all the stress-and-shock shenanigans of the last couple of days, we’ve done masses of work with the kids: geography, history, French, Latin, maths and more. They’ve written about their favourite books, and they’ve drawn pictures representing “Spring” for Illustration Friday. I’ve baked bread twice - using the food processor and shaping it by hand, and it came out really good - yum, we served some with dinner last night, and I’ve just realised there’s some left so that’s my midnight snack sorted Oh, and I phoned to ask why our garbage wasn’t collected, and they apologised and sent someone to collect it today.

Freddy had Beavers last night and tonight George and Barney had Cubs and Scouts respectively. Barney and George also had St John Cadets and Badgers last night - Barney came home very pleased because the leader had found a spare uniform for him to wear when he goes to events to help out. They’re really enjoying St. John; I’m so glad we gave it a second chance (when they tried it about three years ago, in a different town, they said it was boring - and it was!)

And this post is quite long enough, so I’m going to stop writing, and go have some bread