Wishing For a Time Gone By

The other day found me out and about--the cupboard was quite bare, so I needed to do some shopping.  As usual, my shopping trip started out at Walmart--a one-stop shopping experience for an awful lot of what I use. I spent a bit of time wandering around, as I hadn't been in the store for a while--AND the Easter candy was on display. ;)  Just before I went into the checkout line, I saw something that led to an impulse buy:  an AHHH! Bra. I have thought of trying one of these for some time, as I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY hate wearing bras, so I was hoping this would be comfortable for me.  When I left the store, I had an AHHH! Bra in my possession.

I got home after spending far too much money at the grocery store and began to put away all purchases.  (Does anyone else feel as if the WORST part about shopping is putting everything away when you get home?)  I finally got everything squared away and took the box with the bra so that I could try it on.  I opened the box, looked inside, and...IT WAS EMPTY!  I just had spent $20 for an empty box.  What to do, what to do?

The first thing I thought was, "I will take this back to the store and get my money."  But the next thing I thought was, "HOW will they know that I wasn't the one who took the bra out of the box, kept it, and am now trying to return an empty box?"  After thinking about it for a time, I decided to call the store and find out what they would recommend.  As it turned out, I talked to a very sweet girl and she said that she would leave a note at the customer service counter explaining the situation so that there would be no problem when I went back for a refund.  I'm sure this is a problem that has come up before, so they have dealt with this in the past.  But I know from now on I will be much more observant before making a purchase--this box looked as if it had never been opened and the tape-tabs hadn't even been broken!  It's just too sad that we have to be so cynical and untrusting about everything these days.