Kindness: Bend the Rules

A week or so ago, I made some really excellent after-Christmas sale purchases at an outlet mall south of here. I wanted some jeans and a few other things. And I needed a basic, white, long-sleeved t-shirt. I usually get a new one every year (to wear under sweaters and such) and see no need to pay full price for something so basic. So I found one on sale.

I wore it once. I washed it. I took it out of the dryer. With a large wad of white thread. The entire hem had come out of the back. I thought about trying to re-hem it. But I haven't learned how to do that yet on knits. It would never look the same. So I decided to try to take it back.

I went down to the mall on my lunch break. I walked up to the store counter and showed the sales associate the damage. She looked up the shirt in the computer, planning to give me credit to re-purchase at a later time (they were out of stock). But it wouldn’t come up; the computer couldn’t find it. Then she looked harder at the tag and spotted something. She realized it was from an outlet, not a main store. Now, I wasn’t sure about the return policy for outlet v/s regular store, but I thought it was worth a shot. Especially since the outlet was an hour away and who knew when I would be there next. Within the 30-day window? Unlikely.

While she was sorrowfully telling be that they cannot accept outlet returns at that store, the computer kicked in. It recognized the shirt. It pulled up the info on it, price and all. And with that, she must have thought, “why not?” and decided to do the return anyway. Which was really awesome of her. She totally didn’t have to do that. I didn’t feel bad since it was exactly the white t-shirt they sell in the stores, just sent to the outlet. Saved me a t-shirt and a car trip. I was very thankful for her unexpected kindness.