My youngest sister knows I love to cook. She also knows I am not a very good cook and can use all the help I can get. For Christmas this year she bought me an electric roaster. You can cook up to a 22lb. turkey in this sucker! The thing is BIG. I love it but have no place to store it. It is so wide it will not fit into any of my kitchen cupboards. It is both wide and long enough that I have no place to set it out on the counter. If I store it in the basement to “pull out as needed” I can guarantee I will use it once a year tops. So I decided to call her and ask her if she minded if I return it. She said no problem, she will mail me the bill and I can take it back.
My problem is I feel terrible about it. I feel really guilty, almost like I am insulting her. She could care less. “No worries” she kept saying. I explained I really * did * like it and why I thought I might not use it as much as I’d like. It is the first time I have ever returned a gift someone has bought for me. Actually I told her that and she laughed and said “oh great so it’s the worst thing you ever got if you’ve never returned anything else”. (She is a bit of a smart-ass. And she wonders why I smacked her so much as kids whenever mom was not looking.)
Is anyone else returning gifts this year? Why are you returning them and do you feel bad about it at all?
jawofech, maybe you could just swap the roaster you got for a smaller size? Or maybe something else kitchen-oriented. That way you get what you can use, and the spirit of your sister’s gift is intact. No need to feel guilty then.
This year, I returned some bottles of body lotion, body splash, etc. and got some other items that I use more often instead. No guilt about that at all.
The gift I felt worst about returning was a miniature armoire-style jewelry case that was REALLY not my taste. It came from someone who was my best friend at the time, and I knew she might someday realize that her gift was nowhere on display in my apartment (I didn’t have the heart to tell her directly). However, I can honestly say that I have gotten more use out of the fancy duffel bag I got in exchange, and I think of her more often because of that bag than I would if her gift were boxed up somewhere in my parents’ attic. So in the long run, I don’t feel badly about having made that return, either.
My stepmother got my daughter a Backstreet Boys cd because she figured that an eleven-year-old was “the right age for it.” This was the perfect opportunity for me to a) review with my daughter the art of acting pleased that someone’s given you a gift even when the gift isn’t to your taste and b) teach her that unopened merchandise can usually be exchanged at any major store.
She’s enjoying her Mozart cd and she’s grateful that her stepgrandmother cared enough to try to find her something she’d enjoy for Christmas (even if it was a wrong guess).