Puzzled

A couple months ago, Andrew bought some items at Savers, a second-hand thrift store. At the cash register, when one of the items rang up more expensive than Andrew expected, he asked the sales clerk to remove the item, he decided he didn't want to pay for it. She said she couldn't, and because Andrew was in a rush, instead of pushing it, he just asked her for the specs on the return policy: Return within 7 days, with receipt and tags. Okay, fine.

Well, within those seven days, I went back to the store to make the return. After waiting in line at a register for 10 minutes and then being directed to a different line to make a return (apparently register 4 is not as cool as register 1) the sales clerk asked me, "Where are your items you are exchanging for?" I told her I didn't want to exchange, just return, please. "EXCHANGE ONLY." What!?? So, first, they ring up an item for my husband, and when he asks them to take it off the total, they refuse, and tell him he can return in, but really we can't?!!! Kinda feels like a sleezy way to get 40 bucks from us. Since I didn't have anything to exchange, she agreed to give me credit, but it expires in 7 days. She also agreed to keep my items, and just write the credit amount on my receipt. So, if I didn't return within 7 days, they'd get to keep my money AND the items we originally bought! And seeing how I didn't have the items with me the THIRD time we visited the store, the next sales clerk was suspicious of me. Nice.

Andrew and I went back the THIRD time to find $40 worth of merchandise to use our credit before it expired in, yes, 1 week. Okay, this should be easy, we thought, just find some things we want and spend $40, kinda fun. I saw a bunch of games and puzzles I wanted, so we started putting them in our cart. The puzzles were $0.99 a piece. Oh dear. This was going to be a long climb to our goal of $40. Well, to keep a long story from getting to much longer, we actually found a few nice pair of shoes that Andrew got, and I DID end up with a few puzzles, just not 40 of them! So, at home, I have recently enjoyed putting a puzzle together. I wondererd, of 1000 pieces, how many would be missing, since this was from a second-hand store. Check it out:

Not a single piece missing! Pretty good for $0.99. So, if you like puzzles, check out Savers, but buyers beware, you may not end up SAVING like you think . . . .