Because you paid $35 for it

I knew the moment I woke up Saturday that it was going to be "one of those days." For starters, I was 20 minutes late because my alarm clock malfunctioned and I hit every traffic light on the way to work. Anyway.

It felt like I got every evil human being in the history of the world to come through those doors. But this one woman was a peach.

She rolled up with her husband and child, each of whom was pushing a Wal-Mart bicycle. She had a receipt for one of them that said "RECONDIDTIONED BIKE .... $35.00" There had been a sale on the bikes on Thursday and Friday where all the returned bikes were "repaired" and then sold to customers "AS IS," meaning that if you bought it, you bought it and NO RETURN ALLOWED.

So this woman buys a bike for $35 and then gets in a snit when the screw falls out and the pedal falls off. I can see this battle isn't worth fighting and tell her I can refund the bike. She does have the receipt after all.

Then she goes "Why does this happen? Why does he (the boy) ride it for 20 minutes and this happen?"

I go "You paid $35 for a bike. What did you expect?" And she looks at me with these big eyes. Like someone had never dared to tell her the truth before. She got her steam back though and launched into her next tirade - the husband's bike.

"I want the money back on my husband's bike. We bought it a year ago and the pedal fell off after a week."

I tell her "NO." No returns after 90 days. She launches into this long explanation about how they were moving and it was in storage and they were on vacation. "NO."

She stares. I stare. "But I paid $70 for it."

"Ma'am, a really good bike is going to cost you at least $200. These bikes are made in China. Did you really expect a quality product?" Again with the big eyes from her.

Then she goes "What can you do for me about my husband's bike?" I can give you the warranty information, but we can't give you the money or store credit. You should have returned it when it was a problem.

So she just left it there, like the customer service desk was her personal trash bin!