Sometimes, the Customer's Wrong

Story Sent in by Wayne:

"There was something I kind of wanted to do tonight," said Vanessa, in the middle of our first-date dinner.

I asked, "What's that?"

She replied, "I got this bottle of perfume as a Christmas present. It's from Macy's. There's about half of it left, and now it stinks like something died in it."

She looked at me for a reaction, but I didn't discover the something she "kind of wanted to do" in her statement, so I waited for her to continue.

She did: "I tried to return it to Macy's today, but they wouldn't take it. It's their perfume and they wouldn't take it back."

"Probably because there's half of it left."

"Doesn't matter! The customer's always right. Anyway, we're near Macy's and I want to return it there tonight."

It seemed like a poor choice for a first-date activity, but she was adamant. She pulled out the bottle of perfume and showed it to me. It was, as she had said, half full. She invited me to smell it, and it smelled more like alcohol than anything else, but it wasn't awful.

I asked, "What makes you think they'll accept it now, if they didn't before?"

She replied, "Oh, this time it won't be up to them." She then changed the subject before I could question her further.

After dinner, we walked the half-mile to Macy's. I asked her, "What's your plan for returning it?"

She said, "I'm going to throw it through their window!" then laughed long and hard.

"How are you really going to return it?"

"I told you. Through their front window. It's dark and I'm fast."

I mused, "They'll have your fingerprints on the bottle, and what if your first throw doesn't break their window?"

"Oh, it'll break the window," she reassured me, "I'm way stronger than I look."

"What about your fingerprints on the bottle?"

"Hmmm."

They were still open when we arrived. In my attempts to talk her out of vandalism, my point about the fingerprints seemed to carry some weight. But her revenge wouldn't be stopped that easily.

She opened the bottle and poured some of the perfume out on the ground, right in front of the store's main door. She shook it, as apparently it wasn't pouring out fast enough for her. She then threw it on the ground, where it shattered.

"Run, run, run!" she said, and booked it right past me and into the night, without checking to see if I was following her or not.

I hurried back to my car, a half-mile away, and drove off. I don't know where she ended up, and I didn't hear from her again after that stunt.