Why Books-A-Million Sucks January 6, 2009

Remember that bookstore that I was angsting about?  Well now it’s truly all-out loathing.

After my entirely unsatisfactory attempt to try to return my books without letting my mom know (I don’t like telling people, “Thanks so much!  I’m going to take this back in a few days!”), I swallowed the bullet, screwed up my pride and bit my courage and asked for the gift receipts.  Without a receipt, my mom’s money was only going to waste, and that made me feel worse than bucking up and telling her that I was going to exchange her gifts to me.  That turned out to be pretty drama-free (there was simultaneous, unrelated massive drama that I can’t and won’t go into, it’s much too raw) and on New Year’s day I had a gift receipt in my hands.

Today I finally had time to swing over to Books-A-Million.  Yes, I’m naming the store.  I spotted Vaguely-Stoned Woman out wandering the floor, and the people manning the register were much friendlier today.  I got in line for my return, one of apparently many, and handed the cashier my receipt.   She looked at it, and pleasantly told me that since I didn’t have the original receipt, she would put the returned balance on a gift card.

Okaaaaay.

So it appears that  this bookstore will only allow merchandise transactions with an original receipt.  Fine.  However, an original gift receipt is not quite as valid as an original receipt with prices on it, and therefore can only be used towards store merchandise.  In essence, this business has made it so that once a purchase is made, there’s no way they can lose money.  The return policy sans receipt of  the lowest selling price in the last 6 months makes so much more sense now.  This bookstore is not in the business of (gasp!) selling books and magazines, they’re in the business of screwing over people who like to read any way they can.

I knew there was no use in arguing it.  Their return policy is written in terms of “an original receipt” and my defining a gift receipt as something else, they have free reign to do whatever they like.  I took the gift card because I had no choice, and the one thing I do not want is my mom’s gift to me to be useless, wasted money.  But at the same time, I am so livid about this store’s policies that thinking of buying anything from them is making me physically ill.  I wanted to return their merchandise so I could take my business elsewhere.  Now I can’t even do that.  In spite of myself, they have my mom’s money and there’s no way around it.

If I buy anything at Books-A-Million, I’m going to hate it and my mom’s gift will go to waste as surely as if I never returned the books in the first place.  If I buy nothing, the money is still wasted.  No matter what I do, I’ve managed to ruin a gift my mother chose for me, and it pisses me off nearly as much as it upsets me.  I hate crying because of someone else’s asshattery.

Strange, Wonderful December 30, 2008

Friendship is a strange and wonderful thing, and I mean both strange and wonderful in the fullest sense of the words.

Tonight I was driving with my best friend since freshman year of high school when she said something that completely summed up our friendship. It was something along the lines of, “What, decided not to try and kill me tonight?”

You see, we are both very good drivers, and we’ve always been very cautious drivers… except when we’re in a car together. At those times, things just go awry. It isn’t that we’re being reckless or goofing off, we just become Stupid Drivers. We’ve not yet had any actual accidents together –mine have all been solo, she was in a fender-bender with another mutual friend in the car– but there have been plenty of near-misses.

This one was typical. We were on our way from dinner to do a bit of quick shopping, and I needed to make a left-hand turn. It looked like there was plenty of room before the oncoming car would reach us, and I stepped on the accelerator. And as soon as I felt the car start to move, I thought of all the times we’d come so close to a bad outcome, and I braked almost before we started moving.

Not an unwise decision, it turns out, since the oncoming car was moving faster than it appeared. Had I kept going, we probably would have made it through unscathed, but for once I forced the Stupid out of my head and made the responsible driver take charge. I do know that we’ve been lucky so far, and I don’t want our luck to run out while I’m the one behind the wheel.

So yes, tonight I decided not to try to kill you. We’ve got something too strange and wonderful to risk.

I Can’t Believe I Hate a Bookstore December 29, 2008

Bookstores have always been an oasis and a refuge for me. There is little more soul-satisfying than shelves of brand-new books just waiting to be brought home and devoured and gradually worn down by countless loving reads and re-reads. And until tonight, I’ve never been in a bookstore I haven’t liked.

I received two books for Christmas that I’d like to return (one was a duplicate, and the other I have no desire to read even though it was written by the same author) and wanted to know what the store’s policy was. I went to the information desk at the front of the store and asked the slightly stoned-but-happy-looking woman standing there how they handled returns. She replied, “It’s printed on the back of the receipt.”

I calmly explained to her that I had received the books in question as a Christmas gift and didn’t have a receipt. A cashier looked over at me and asked, “Don’t you have a gift receipt?”

I replied to the negative. The cashier then asked, “Did you buy them yourself?” The Information Desk woman looked on in a daze.

I repeated that no, I didn’t buy them, I got them as a gift, and had no receipt of any kind. The cashier then said, “Well then…..”

As I waited for the cashier to continue whatever it was she was saying, Information Desk woman opened up the register tape compartment and pulled out a length of blank tape and handed it to me (the return policy was on the back). The cashier apparently had no intention of finishing her thought and was studiously ignoring me.

I read through the words on the back of the register tape and finally came to a bit about how they’d accept returns without a receipt and give credit in the amount of the lowest sale price of the book over the period of the last 6 months. As I tried to verify this with Information Desk woman, she just gazed at me blankly.

Boggled that not a single employee could tell me the store’s return policy, I folded the tape and put it in my purse.

I normally love bookstores. I left with such hatred for this one that I almost don’t want to return the damn books because I feel sure I’ll get pennies for them in exchange, and I don’t want to give them a cent more than they’re legally due. I almost don’t even want the store credit because I don’t want to encourage the unhelpfulness and vacuity of their staff. I left the store feeling hostile and dirty.

I’m almost dreading going back tomorrow with the books to find out what they’re willing to offer me credit-wise. Depending on their answer, if it isn’t worth the feelings of disgust I get from dealing with that store, I’ll keep the damn books and sell them through Amazon.

Gunpowder December 27, 2008

What strange seasonal weather. As is typical the last few years, we didn’t have a white Christmas. It was more of a mucky-grey-and-brown Christmas, although there were flakes in the air. But now, here it is two days after Christmas and outside it’s a balmy 61F. We’re talking about a part of the country that regularly had snowstorms on Halloween when I was young. This is seriously weird.

It will be nice for the family, though, since the Mr., my dad, my brother, and assorted kidlets will be trekking off for points south to a cabin for a few days of rustic living and gunpowder. It would be more of a guys’ outing except that my goddaughter insists on going along. She’s a pretty good shot, from what I hear.

No one in my family hunts –we’re all too soft-hearted– but most of us shoot. Among the adults, my mom and SIL are the only exceptions. Now the kids are getting involved, and most of the focus for them is on gun safety and responsibility. They’re going to be around guns, that’s already an established fact, and they’re much less likely to misuse them or be stupid about them if they’re taught and supervised and given the information they need to have the proper respect for firearms.

The other bonus is that I’ll have a few days to myself, and I can eat what I want and leave the TV off if I want and play on the computer when I want for as long as I want. I still have to go back to work Monday, but I’m going to thoroughly enjoy tomorrow and Monday evening. And for that, I don’t care what the weather is.