Can I Speak To Your Manager?

So today I had errands to run. This was the first day to be gone from the house for longer than 20 minutes since our wee one came along. I knew I had to schedule this day, and I quickly forgot how exhausting it is to schedule your daily routine around nap time and feedings. I am telling you... the next war 'Merica gets into, they should have mothers who have recently given birth and are breast feeding do the strategic planning. I am sure everything would go much smoother and not one soldier would ever be hungry!

We started out the day with piano lessons. How we made it out of the house in time I will never know... actually, that is a lie. I know exactly how we made it out of the house-my three year old looked like a street urchin. She was allowed to dress herself and do her own hair this morning. I looked at her and did not have time to dwell on the fact that just 2 short weeks ago I would have never left the house without her looking as cute as a button, but this morning I let her have her way. She even had chocolate on her face from the ice cream bar she had before bed last night... nice.

After piano I had to get myself to Buy Buy Baby to return a few items that I did not need. This is the time of the post that I should mention that I will NEVA buy anything at Buy Buy Baby again. They are not nice. They are especially not nice when you want to return something. I guess that is why they call their store Buy Buy Baby, and not Return Return Baby. I suppose if they were called Return Return Baby they may have a line of new moms wanting to return their baby at 3 am each night.

I was returning a baby tub. I paid 30 big ones for this tub and decided the other day that I will never use the tub. We have a tub that came with the house that will do just fine. I think it is more of a pain to drag out a baby tub, fill it, get the kid in it, empty it, dry it-because if you don't you get mold, and then put it away again. It is much easier to just fill up the big white tub in the bathroom with 2 inches of water and lay the baby in there to kick and scream in delight.

Well, the lady at customer service (they need to think of a new name for this department) didn't think that my story was valid and she called her supervisor to come "inspect" the tub. Her supervisor came to "inspect" the tub and looked it up and down. She turned it over, pulled on the attached toys and even SMELLED it! She must have had a job as an airport strip searcher and decided that working at a baby super store was much more conducive to her bubbly personality.

She turned to me and said, "We do not take merchandise back that is in this condition."

Now, when this woman woke up this morning I am sure she did not think that she was going to meet me. If she did think that she was going to meet me, she may have had a bigger breakfast because she was going to need all of the brain power she could muster to deal with me-a lactating, bleeding, strategically perfected errand runner, who was dragging 4 kids with her like a big ol' caboose to a train.

I literally lifted my wee one out of my arms and said "Do you see this baby here? She is just a week old. She still has her umbilical nub for goodness sake! She has not taken a bath in that bathtub."

The supervisor pointed out some dirt marks that were on the tub... to which I replied were probably there when I purchased it. This I knew was a fib, because I looked at my urchin three year old and my mischievous 9 year old and knew that they had walked all over that stinking tub in the van because they can never step OVER something...no they have to step right on it. But I was not budging and I was not leaving that store without my refund.

I started in on the fact that this was ridiculous and that I would never shop here again and that I could have gotten it cheaper at Target and so on... People started to walk by slowly so they could listen to the commotion and eventually we had a nice little circle of moms around us. I was half expecting them to start chanting "fight fight fight" but they didn't.

In the end I made it out of there with my 30 bucks. The supervisor looked so pained to give me my money back that I felt all the more victorious! The kids and I hopped back in the van-but not before my skirt blew up in the wind and I was whistled at by a few Hispanic men in the parking lot. I am soo back!