One Pregnancy Brain Free With Purchase

I’m working seasonally at a department store around Christmas. One day I’m in textiles and a pregnant lady comes up to me asking to help her with some pillows. We go to the pillows and she picks out 8-10 that she wants. She won’t carry a single one because she’s pregnant — her words. So I have to make two or three trips back up to the register. I ring her up and she leaves.

The next day I’m working in the kitchen department. She comes up to the register with a big box (heavier than pillows!) and says, “You again?” The box is a free gift with purchase. It even says so on the side of the box. It’s a set of three sauté pans that you get when you buy a larger set of cookware. I immediately tell her this is a free gift with purchase and point out the words on the box. She tells me she wants her money back anyway. The box is all faded and has huge grease spots all over it.

This store has customer return label stickers that act as a receipt. They get scanned and put on anything you buy. I scan the label because she doesn’t have a receipt and see that she “bought” (acquired?) the set last Christmas season, and it’s showing she’ll get zero dollars back for returning it because it’s a FREE GIFT WITH PURCHASE.

I show her the computer screen and she refuses to leave this store without some money for her used pans. She walks me over to the same cookware set and gift with purchase and shows me. Ok. You still didn’t pay anything for it. She insists she paid for it. I ring up one of the new boxes to show her it won’t even let you ring it up without ringing the bigger cookware set first.

I finally flag down a manager after what seemed like hours and ran away to tidy up another part of the department until she left, so I don’t know if she ever got any money for the pans she didn’t pay for and used for a year!