I hate returning items to the store that haven’t lived up to expectations. I resent the time and hassle. Why couldn’t they get it right the first time?

When I had to return some sunflower seeds to my local bulk food store, it seemed to me somewhat of an imposition. I don’t eat sunflower seeds. But my wife said the batch I bought last week didn’t taste right.

Since I bought them, it was up to me to return them. I understood that. Stores don’t give refunds, they credit whatever card was used for the original purchase. In this case it was mine.

I didn’t really resent the trip – I don’t ever remember having to return something to this store before. But it was a bigger production than I expected.

To me it seemed like a simple process. Show the receipt, get a refund on my credit card. What could be simpler?

It wasn’t.

My wife had emptied the seeds from the plastic bag they came in into a jar, the same one illustrating today’s post. She then either used the bag for something else or threw it in the trash.

Before heading for the store i thought about putting them back in a plastic bag, but that seemed wasteful somehow. And any bag I used wouldn’t have come from that store – my receipt was proof of purchase.

It was early afternoon and the store was pretty much empty. I walked up to the cash and showed the clerk, a young woman who appeared to be in her late teens, my receipt and explained that my wife had said the seeds were rancid tasting. The clerk appeared confused at the word. “They don’t taste good,” I explained.

She then made a trip to the back of the store, i presume to consult with a manager on how a refund should be issued. (I didn’t want more sunflower seeds – I figure the stuff in the bin only a few days after is probably from the same batch and will taste the same.)

When she came back, she asked for the receipt again (which listed the unit price of the seeds, the weight and what I paid). Then she asked what the jar weighed. I told her I didn’t know. She seemed confused.

Apparently her intent was to weigh the jar with the seeds in it, deduct the weight of the jar, calculate the weight of the seeds from that, figure out the price and issue me a refund. I supposed that makes sense in a way – if the necessary information hadn’t been on the original cash register receipt.

She told me she didn’t know what to do. So she rang for the manager. Let somebody in management figure out the problem.

What would you have done? Probably what I did.

I told her not to bother the manager. Instead I reached for the nearest display, peeled a plastic bag off the roll there and emptied the jar into the bag. Problem solved.

The seeds in the bag weighed exactly what the cash register receipt said they should. Obviously my wife didn’t eat many before realizing they were not very good.

From there I quickly got my card credited. But it left me thinking.

I have shopped at this store for decades, Most of the staff are university students. It is somewhat disturbing to think that someone at that level of education couldn’t have seen the obvious solution to the jar issue.

Not that it should have required a university education. That is the sort of problem solving I would have thought was common to all elementary school graduates.

It is a bulk food store. Almost everything they sell is scooped by customers into plastic bags to be weighed at the checkout. A glass jar shouldn’t cause a mental shutdown.

All of which has me wondering about whether our educational system, at all levels, is teaching students to think. Or are they just taking in information and not learning how to process any of it?

That certainly would explain the rise of postmodernism, among other things.