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Returning that Christmas Cheer
By Deborah Taylor-Hollis
So yesterday Santa visited your home, or the Hanukkah candles were lit, or you had a "holiday party," complete with lots of food, friends, and cheerful music that puts your teeth on edge and it the No. 1 excuse to add more brandy to the eggnog.
Today, as you run out the door in the near dark, many of you will embark on the most horrendous journey of your lives. No, I'm not talking about driving relatives, who have overstayed their welcome, back to the airport before they miss the only noncancelled flight back to Dallas. Your adventure will be more chilling than that. It is time to exchange all the stuff you were given that you hate.
I have spent most of my life becoming an expert on exchanges, having once returned a bed jacket to Macy's four years after purchase for my grandmother (she hated it and forgot she put it in the back of the closet), and being a regular member of the "I don-t need a receipt, it has your store tags on it" club. I may have to go from talking with a cashier, to waiting for the floor manager, to discussing things with the store manager, to getting the district manager's number, and eventually calling the main headquarters in Illinois, but I have never had to keep something larger than a hat nor more expensive than a sandwich.
It has been proven that trying to exchange something the day after Christmas is considered by some professionals to be a major schizophrenic disorder. By waiting upwards of a week, stores replenish their stock, the "returns" desk people get broken in well enough that you don't have to train them, and the amount of time waiting in a line goes from four weeks to about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, no matter how long you wait, the PlayStation 2 will not be in stock until March. Period.
Another caveat of returns is that you can get something else that you want. Pick out the crystal, in exchange for the purple glass fruit; get the fur-lined muff, instead of the umpteenth sweater with reindeer on it. The down side is that anything you want to exchange will cost you money out of pocket. No one in the history of the world ever took a bad gift into the store and after picking out what she wanted got change back. Your choice will always be more expensive.
My husband hates malls and department stores to such an extent that he has chosen option B: keeping unwelcome gifts. He recycles them as presents to someone else. He is so adept at this that he says unwrapping them should be done carefully. If you open the paper at one end only, along the tape lines, you can close it up later and give it again without even rewrapping. Only the card on top changes. This is not acceptable etiquette, but I have seen it happen (especially amongst office workers during parties).
My husband has some basic rules for this. He makes sure that the gift isn't something that would embarrass him to be associated with (no singing fish, no underwear, and nothing in pink), and that it is gender neutral, so he does not have to worry about "girl gifts' going to guys, or vice-versa.
Years ago, we were given a wedding present sent with great love over many thousands of miles. It was a clear plastic three-piece portable tuna turner. No, not Tina Turner- tuna turner: a covered bowl with a spike stile in the middle that would separate tuna before you add the mayonnaise. Not only was this a useless, lovingly chosen item, but it was purchased out of state and there was no way to return the thing. It also fell under the "embarrassment clause" of gift giving. That is where option C arrives. The garage sale.
What a person cannot take back or pass along gets sold. The tuna turners of the world end up on picnic tables in spring next to mismatched art and wine fair glasses, toddler toys, Naugahyde furniture and every sweater with a reindeer on it ever made.
Holiday gifts are easy to spot in garage-sale land. They are brand new, frequently still in the box. The have some small bit of tape stuck to the bottom, often with a smidge of colored holiday paper attached. When you need to ask the price and hold it into the air so the sellers can see it over the crowd, they will always blanch, stammer a bit, and then quote you a lowball price.
Their objective is to get rid of it without throwing a perfectly good item into the landfill. Anything under a dollar is, most definitely, a rejected Christmas gift. And if it is something you have never seen, and the seller doesn't know what it is either, it's probably from out of state, as well.
Deborah Taylor-Hollis can be reached for comments at DTHOLLIS@metronews.com
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
