Christina Oxenberg

June 06, 2009

K-Mart, in its brilliance, offers a ?Money Back Guaranteed Read?. Certain volumes of the selection of fiction and non-fiction books have huge round egg-yolk yellow stickers with monster font advertising this deal of the century.

I cozied up to a young female store clerk, ?What is this all about? Do I get my money back if I don?t like the ending? If I don?t like the characters, or the plot? What is the refund based on??

No store employee knew anything about the details, nor was there any literature on the matter to shed light on exactly how this good time is guaranteed.

I ventured over to the Customer Service desk. A customer was already at the counter. She was hurling abuse at the calm employee behind the cash register; Viviane, according to her name tag. Despite being on the slender side, the enraged customer had no trouble thrusting a dark green plastic sun chair at Viviane, no doubt to amplify her point. Loosely, her point was a threat that ?they had just lost a really, really, really good customer?. The customer cursed, she accused, she threatened. Her shrillness got to me and I suddenly found her rather annoying.

With the sun chair held tightly against her flat chest, she made to swan off.

?See ya!?, I barked, clearly.

Spinning around she focused all her attention on me. She squinted her eyes.

?What did you say?? She asked, expecting me to combust from terror. She appeared to be in the habit of easily frightening others. Most likely she runs a school.

?I said, see ya!? And I flashed my most insincere smile.

She stalked off.

After sharing the laugh of victorious warriors, Viviane told me not to worry about the Money Back Guarantee sticker on the book. ?You don?t need a reason. We take anything back.?