“Next, please.” The salesman glared at me, and almost immediately I felt a sense of doom. I held no receipt, just a large box containing one CPR dummy, presented to me by my wonderful sister-in-law. I am, apparently, one of those people with everything. Whatever happened to gift certificates?
My problems, though, were double. Not only was I returning an item, fairly expensive at that, but I was also returning a damaged item. My clever, wonderful children, seeing my scorn for the dummy (I had since named it Dim Sum), immediately set upon it with scissors, markers, and two thumb tacks. The eyelids were painted bright red, thumbtacks were inserted into the earlobe area, and the lips were almost completely removed by the scissors. Three pairs of scissors were destroyed in an attempt to render Dim Sum lipless. I had learned from my mistake, though, and would never again threaten my children with de-lipping for mouthing off. Not that I’ve ever threatened my children…
“I need to return this.” I stepped up to the counter and pushed the box across to the salesman.
The salesman, proclaimed Jeff by the nametag on his blue vest, looked down at the box. “Do you have a receipt?” He proceeded to scan the bar code and looked the item up on the computer screen.
I shook my head. “No, it was a gift.” I took a deep breath and repeated the words ‘please don’t look inside the box’ over in my mind. Jeff, however, didn’t listen. He began to open the box while saying, “You know, returns can only be made without a receipt if the item is unopened and undamaged, or is faulty…” He trailed off as the ghastly sight of Dim Sum came into view. His mouth slightly agape, he looked up at me, down at Dim Sum, then up at me. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m a CPR instructor,” I rushed. “I was giving a lesson, and while showing the class the proper way to, umm, breathe into Dim Su…I mean the dummy’s mouth, the lips exploded.”
“Explod…”
“Yes! It was horrible. I was breathing out, and the lips just exploded! My face was swollen for a week, my left eye swelled shut. The students were terrified by the blood loss. The explosion was so intense it even blew little holes in the dummy’s earlobes. See? It took me ten minutes just to get the dummy’s tongue out of my mouth. One piece got stuck in the ceiling fan. The doctor told me that I was lucky MY lips didn’t get blown off. I’ve been in physical therapy for two weeks and the therapist says I may never have full use of my tongue again. My husband is devastated. And I’ll have you know that I hold your store accountable.”
“What? How could y…”
“By selling faulty merchandise, that’s how! How dare you let unwitting people purchase dummies with faulty lips? Have you no shame? Tens, maybe hundreds of people across this fine state may even now as we speak be blowing the lips off of CPR dummies in their very own living rooms!” I shook my head and grabbed the box. “Never mind. It’s apparent that you don’t seem to care about my lips, or the lips of others. I’ll just take this to my lawyer like my husband begged me to. Maybe he’ll care about my lips…”
Jeff grabbed the box from me. “That won’t be necessary. We would be happy to take the merchandise back, ma'am. Please?”
I sighed and shrugged. “Whatever.”
Jeff just smiled.