yeah, it’s meant to be rude to them. I’m pretty well annoyed. Last Thursday Logan and I went in to McKenzie Outfitters to get her a small Sigg bottle that would fit in her snack basket. The kids all have mugs in the classroom, but Logan has wanted to bring her own water bottle, and has complained about the lack of cleanliness of the mugs. Unless she wants to wash her mug regularly herself, she’s right on that one, they aren’t washed often and are out for anyone to touch or use, although only the kid belonging to the mug should use it. A water bottle in the snack basket is a surer bet.

So we got the bottle. We also got a pair of plastic Crocs sandles because Logan’s been wanting some for a while and we didn’t have any summer shoes that could get wet yet, for wading in creeks and things. Completely an impulse buy. Then after I’d paid I saw sunglasses for under $10, and had Logan look at them. Her eyes aren’t quite as sensitive to bright light as mine, but they’re close. So while Logan crawled in and out of tents, I bought her a pair of sunglasses too. Then we went home and I lugged a sleeping Logan, new shoes and water bottle in to the house.

Friday morning, because we knew her regular school shoes hadn’t been brought in, she wore her Crocs to the car. I’d seen her with them on the Crocs hook in the store, and thought we’d put them in the car. When we got to school she couldn’t find them, and I couldn’t find them, but I thought she’d hidden them so she could wear her Crocs to school. She did wear them to school, because we didn’t have time enough for me to look throughally.

The school shoes didn’t turn up in the house or on a more through search of the car, so today, Monday, I went back to McKenzie Outfitters to ask if a pair of little girl’s pink Velcro sneakers were in their Lost and Found. “Oh yes,” they said. “We’ll get them.” They looked. And looked. And checked. Then they called someone else and announced that the shoes had been thrown out because they assumed that either a pair of shoes had been stolen and those left in their place or those had been left in order to be thrown out. They were used most definitely, but it means I’ve got to take Logan out for a new $40 pair of sneakers, because the Target type don’t fit her feet. Evidently children’s shoes left by a tent don’t automatically get put into lost and found, they get passed from hand to hand until someone decides there’s no reason to keep them.

The woman who told me she was a manager apologized and stated it was “one accident” which shouldn’t effect my continued business with them. She refused to give me any contact information to send a letter to the store to let them know how extremely dissatisfied I was with my experience. She said “we can’t give you money”, and another employee pointed out that the shoes weren’t new, as if new or old made a difference in foot covering for a child with hard to fit feet. These were the last of the fall shoes that hadn’t been outgrown and they aren’t carried by the store where we bought them or we’d have bought a second pair already. The same woman offered to give me “something” from the store, which I refused, there was nothing there useful or reasonable to replace a pair of school shoes.

We haven’t told Logan what happened. She shouldn’t have set the shoes down and left them. I should have checked again to make sure she had them before we left. It doesn’t do any good to make her upset too knowing they are gone due to some employee’s inability to hold a lost item even until three and a half days had passed. (I commented that I’d come in on the second business day, and was immediately told that they were open on the weekends so it was more business days than that. Perhaps I should have said “banking days”.) I told Logan that since her shoes seem to be so well lost we’ll have to go shopping for some new ones now instead of in the summer or fall. She’s happy at that prospect.

Evidently despite spending nearly $50, and better than half an hour as one set of two customers in the store, Logan and I didn’t make an impression on the employees at McKenzie Outfitters last Thursday. Normally a seven year old girl shopping and discussing her choices appears to be taken note of. Shop keepers and clerks know Logan most of the places we go. She orders snacks or drinks for herself, talks to clerks if she needs to try something on (as she did there), and is around the store a few dozen times while we’re in it because she’s in constant motion. I doubt they’ll notice the lack of our business either.

I regret taking my business away from a local shop, but “one accident” followed by a fully unpleasant experience in dealing with that mistake lost me. I do wonder if subjecting them to a screaming tantrum of my own would have made an impression, but I doubt it would have been an effective one. A blog post has to do in its place.

Filed under: life