But they don't have sales tax in Connecticuit

I went shopping at lunch. A favorite pastime since the mall is literally a block away. As went in to Lord & Taylor to hunt down a cheap merino sweater, I noticed one striking thing. The only women shopping were the age of my grandmother, or my age with children. Maybe the women my age that work, don't like to shop at Lord & Taylor. But this reallly wasn't what I was going to write about.

As I was standing in line to purchase my newly found sweater, I was behind 3, count 'em 3, grandmas. The first 2 went fairly quickly. The third, wanted to do an exchange. *Rolls eyes* Now of course, everyone has to make an exchange once in a while. But this one was in front of me, and the clerk had been trained on exchanges, but behaved as if he'd never actually had the opportunity to do one.

This befuddled me a little bit because he had one of those gold pins on his namebadge, signifying he was a "good" employee. How can you be that stellar if you don't know how to do an exchange, quickly and efficiently?

The woman wasn't helping either. First she wanted the man to scan the clothes she was returning, because the clothes she was buying were on clearance and if the clothes she was exchanging were less than the ones she wanted then she just wanted to do a return. He dutifully scanned the tags on the clothes to see what the prices were. Since the clothes being exchanged were the EXACT ones she was trying to buy, they of course came up in the system as the exact price of the ones she'd just picked out. The sales clerk didn't even seem to comprehend that this might be the case.

So on we went, first the pants. When the gift receipt information was punched in and the new pants were scanned, lo and behold she got back $10! She blinked, the clerk blinked, her husband standing slightly off to the side blinked. The pants she'd gotten as a gift had obviously been purchased before the reduction. But she got her $10 and smiled happily while he started working on the shirt.

The shirt, she mentioned, to him, her husband, and oddly enough to me, was not on sale, so it should be a flat exchange. As the salesman was working on this piece, he looked up at me and said, there's another cashier at the other end of the store if you;d like to go down there. No way. I'd already waited out 2 grandma's and half of this one. I wasn't going to the other end to wait in another line so I could simply charge my $30 sweater. Grandma #3 turned to me again at this point and said, I always go check out the other register and wind up in a line. You were smart for staying here.

The shirt it turns out required $2.45 to be paid. Everybody blinked again. And grandma #3 said "OH, but there's no sales tax in Connecticuit." Obviously where the gift had been purchased. "Why do I have to pay the sales tax when it should just be a flat exchange?" The salesman point out to her that we do have sales tax in MD and since she was purchasing the new item here, tax would have to be paid. Grandma #3 blinked again and looked befuddled. The saleman (smart guy) quickly pointed out then that she'd already gotten $10 on the pants. She decided, $7.55 plus the shirt and pants, was a fair enough exchange. But she mumbled to her husband the whole way out of the store, that it would've probably been better if they'd made the exchange in Connecticuit.

I never heard her husband say a word the entire time. Smart man.