Flamingo-ing Crazy

(I work in a discount store, the kind that buys the overstock of other companies and sells it for a cheaper price. We’ve got a little bit of everything here, and since spring is coming, we’ve started to get some outdoor and gardening products in. On a slower night, I’m up at the registers helping process returns. A customer walks up to my coworker’s register holding a pink flamingo yard ornament, the one that comes on a stick that you put in the ground.)

Coworker: “Hi, how are you tonight?”

Customer: “Oh, you know… As good as a guy buying a pink flamingo could be.”

(He purchases his yard ornament and leaves the store. Two hours later he returns with the flamingo, only its stand is completely bent out of shape. I don’t mean dented in a couple of areas; he twisted this thing into some kind of maze.)

Customer: “I need to return this.”

(We don’t have a strict return policy: 30 days, as long as it doesn’t look like it’s been used, worn, or altered.)

Coworker: “Um, I’m sorry, sir, but I won’t be able to return this for you,”

Customer: “Well, why the h*** not?”

Coworker: “The stand is bent out of shape. That’s not how it looked when I sold it to you a couple of hours ago,”

Customer: “It wasn’t popping my car door open when it was straight, so I had to bend it to fit.”

Coworker: “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,”

Customer: “I locked my keys inside my car, and I bought this stupid thing to pop my door open. The stand is too thick to get between the door and the body, though, so you’re going to return it for me.”

Coworker: “I can’t do that. The product has been altered; therefore, I can’t refund you.”

(He demands to see the manager, who tells him the same thing my coworker told him. When it is clear he can’t get his way, he breaks the flamingo over his knee, shoves it into my manager’s arms, and stomps out. At the same time, another coworker enters the building after coming back from her lunch. We explain what happened before the manager came up, and this coworker chimed in.)

Other Coworker: “The guy with the flamingo? Oh, yeah, I saw him from my car. He was jamming the end of that thing between the door. I don’t know why he didn’t just buy the coat hangers we have. They’re cheaper and thinner so he probably could have gotten into his car.”