Refunds, Exchanges, and Me

by Donna Poole

At the wise old age of sixteen I ran the refund and exchange desk at Grand Union. That store was kind enough to give me a job, but I was too young to run a register or even work the lunch counter, so returns and exchanges it was.

If it wasn’t tough enough to let disgruntled customers take their angst out on me as though I had personally manufactured the faulty item, I also managed the Kiddy Korner at the same time. Kiddy Korners, thankfully, are a relic of the distant past, so I’ll have to elaborate. A parent opened a half-door, shoved seven screaming, snotty nosed offspring into my cubicle, left to blissfully shop for seven hours, and then relaxed with a hamburger and a cup of coffee at the lunch counter. Already in my cubicle were an assortment of other screaming, fighting, playing, children. Some clung to my legs terrified to be there while I said, “Yes, sir,” and “No, ma’am,” to the aforementioned disgruntled refund and exchange customers. Oh, and the Kiddy Korner had only half-walls. Stock boys threw heaps of boxes behind the walls. More than one adventurous child managed to climb over a half-wall and disappear into the boxes, and I had to dive over myself and retrieve escaped prisoners.

Now, here’s the funny part about my job. I loved it. Honestly, I did. At sixteen, who isn’t up for a challenge? I aimed to make the angry customers smile, calm the crazy littles, and comfort the terrified ones. When I turned seventeen, the store promoted me to the lunch counter and dismantled the Kiddy Korner. Even though I’d never lost a child, I think someone with a brain realized Kiddy Korners might equal insurance liability.

That job taught me to be considerate of weary clerks running return and exchange counters. Yesterday, when we were both twenty-something-young, I went with Lonnie, my sister-in-law, to return a gift at a store in Ithaca, New York. Think of the kindest, nicest person you know, multiply that by ten, and you may come close to imagining Lonnie. She held her return in her arms and stood quite a distance back from the next person in line. Leaving a considerable distance between yourself and the person in front of you in a line must be a family trait, because my husband, John, does the same thing his sister Lonnie does. Not me. I’m Italian. We don’t mind close.

Lonnie stood so far back that other people, many of them, cut in front of her. Lonnie didn’t say anything to them. The Italian part of me said things like, “Hey, rude dude! Back off! She was here first!” But I didn’t say anything out loud for two reasons. I was with Lonnie, the nicest human God ever created, and I was shy yesterday, when I was young.

After we’d waited in line about a half hour with people cutting in front of us, I said, “Lonnie, maybe we should move up closer. I don’t think the other people realize you’re waiting in this line.”

“Oh, you don’t think they know I’m waiting?”

Actually, I did think they knew. They were just being rude and taking advantage because that’s what some people do, but I didn’t want to tell Lonnie that. She was too nice to hear it.

I haven’t been to a store’s refund or exchange department in years. I’m all for supporting local businesses, but because my oncologist sealed me in a bubble, I haven’t been in a store for two years. I’ve discovered the ease of Amazon. (Please, small businesses, don’t hate me.) I love Amazon’s return and exchange policy. You notify them you’re returning an item and send it back. There’s no long waiting in line.

I’ve used another even easier exchange department for years. I remember well the day I discovered it. I was sitting in the rock garden at the little house we used to live in next door. The tiny white lilies of the valley were in bloom. I breathed in their beautiful fragrance. Gentle, peaceful, patient, trusting, beautiful—I thought how unlike them I was. Unloving, selfish, impatient me—definitely not beautiful or fragrant.   

Exchange what you are for what I’m waiting to give you.

The thought came suddenly and with joy. I could do that, couldn’t I!

What was that Amy Carmichael had written? “Love through me, Love of God; /Make me like thy clear air/Through which, unhindered, colors pass/As though it were not there.” And this? “Think through me, thoughts of God, /And let my own thoughts be/Lost like the sand-pools on the shore/Of the eternal sea.”

What a wonderful God, willing to pour His love, His life, His thoughts through me! So, I gave it a try, right there in the rock garden, among the lilies of the valley.

Lord, here’s my selfishness. I’d like to exchange it for your love. Love through me! Here’s my impatience; please, may I exchange it for your patience?

I prayed a long time in the rock garden that day. Did I leave with saintly behavior? Not exactly; ask those who live with me! God takes His time making us like Jesus. But now I pray often, “Love through me, love of God; think through me thoughts of God, live through me life of God.”

When a nasty attitude creeps in, I know just where to take it. I march right up to the exchange department; Jesus accepts it with a smile and gives me His own sweetness. I trade despair for courage, criticism for compassion, and harshness for tenderness. Often, I trade fear for faith.

I’m sure there must be lines a million miles long at His desk, but I never see another person. Why? Because, as someone said, “God loves each one of us as if there were only one to love.”

So, no long waiting in line for me. There’s no one to cut in front of us at God’s exchange department, Lonnie, although I’m sure you need to visit it far less often than I do!  

I wonder what happened to all my refund and exchange customers and those children who bounced off and over the walls in my Kiddie Korner. I haven’t thought about them in a long time. Bless them, Lord, bless them all.