Scanning across the news yesterday I came across the story saying that Toronto is the 3rd “politest” city in the world. My initial reaction was to snort air through my nose, flop my head back like it was on a loose spring and say “yeah right.” They certianly didn’t do their research in the subway.

You can see that I’m a bit skeptical of this claim.

Last night I had to do the single most difficult thing a man has ever done. Ever. I had to try to get a refund from a computer supply store. In actuality I had put money down on a part that never materialized after 8 weeks of waiting (note to Mac-heads: never get RAM in a discount PC store. You might get it cheaper, but the hassles are insurmountable). To date, I’ve spent over $5000 in parts with this particular store so I’m familiar with the owner. He has an internalized uni-directional construct of cash flow (into the register only). So I knew I was in for a bit of a fight trying to get this cash back.

Getting to the store I had to wait for the owner to finish up with a tall lad dressed like a beach bum, purchasing more hard drive space than NASA. Suddenly the owner, bored of answering this guy’s questions, started to serve me while the Beach Bum was reading a label on a box. I hate that. I insisted that I wasn’t in any rush and that he should keep helping the Beach Bum. The Bum replies: “Dude! I’m in no rush!”

“I’m afraid I’m going to be a while with my question,” I said.

Regardless of our little exchange, the owner starts rifling through his papers to get my file. “I got you right here, Ted.”

The Beach Bum makes a deferral hand gesture so I start into my problem: I’m not happy, no calls from the computer store while I waited so I got the part from another store, bla bla bla.

“Ooooh, see Ted, we don’t actually give refunds,” the owner hisses.

“On product. In my case I never saw the product.”

“Oooh see, yeah. Oooo.” He shuffles my paperwork around as if it will make everything go away. “You’ll have to take a store credit.”

“I’m maxed out on my system now. I don’t think I’ll be buying anything new for a year now.”

Beach Bum has stopped reading his box and is listening to us by this time. “How much is your ‘credit’?” the Bum asks.

“$111. And change.” I say.

“I have that much in cash, I’ll buy it from you and use your credit towards my purchase.”

I blink. The owner blinks. Whole lotta blinking going on. It made sense. It was a nice gesture and we all won. Quickly before the owner could think of a reason this would put him out of any kind of cash, the Beach Bum hands me the money and takes my credit note. As the owner wrang us up, still fumbling over his paperwork, wondering if he’s getting the shaft because I’m certain he didn’t really understand what was going on, the Beach Bum starts to drill me about hard drive partitions. Fair dinkum, I thought, and offered as much as I knew.

The whole transaction was a fast-thinking, clever evade executed by the Beach Bum that saved my business relationship with the store owner. I thanked him and as I left the store with my cash, I thought that maybe there was some truth to that article after all.