If you’re thinkin’ that it’s baseball, well you’d better think again. In America, shopping is THE national sport and this past weekend, I learned a bit more about how this national sport is played.

I went to Macy’s for their President’s Day sale. Macy’s was trying to clear out their previously un-cleared out winter merchandise, and like two-day old Swedish Meatballs, the offers were delicious.

Macy’s is a chain of department stores selling products in the mid to high-end range. According to Wikipedia, Macy’s has about as many employees as former President Bill Clinton’s home town of Little Rock has residents — around 180,000. It’s feeling the economic slowdown, though, and that number is going to fall. At the beginning of this month, layoffs in the range of 7,000 were announced, and stores from New York to San Fransisco will be handing out pink slips to people — people who have a reputation of being friendly and customer service oriented.

That’s sad. Even sadder is when it’s hard to find personnel to help you pay for your purchases in the store — in women’s wear, I went to three empty sales desks before finally finding someone “open” where I could check my choices out.

And what choices they were. I bought two party dresses — 80% off with an additional 30% at the cash desk. Both were originally priced close to $200 — and one cost me $12.50 and the other $32. Unbelievable. And when I asked the sales clerk if this was a final sale, she said “Of course not, honey, you have 6 months to return them.”

“Six months?” I asked, my shock level growing even higher.

“Yes, six months. Of course we prefer you bringing them back earlier, but you have six months.”

 I got to thinking about this and called my sister Bridget, the world’s foremost expert on shopping. She said, “Remember when I worked at The Gap? We had a 6 month return policy even 10 years ago. People would bring things back and we’d mark them down and put them on the super sales rack and those things would move.” I bet they would.

But really, do we need 6 months to make up our minds about a dress that’s been marked down to $12.50? I don’t think so. Perhaps 2 weeks, but 6 months? That’s far too generous. And that’s got to cost a store a lot of money — especially on merchandise that’s already been heavily marked down. Like my $12.50 party dress.

Please President Obama,, make the retailers of this country make the consumers more responsible about their purchasing decisions. Pass a bill that limits returns on merchandise to a more reasonable level, like two weeks. Or even four. This will help the retailers avoid old stock problems, and help their bottom lines in a natural way.

And with healthier bottom lines, perhaps I’ll be able to find sales people manning the tills next President’s Day.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 6:23 am and is filed under Americana. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.