After hacking away for about an hour without success, I decided to return the axe. When I got to the hardware store, I told the cashier that I wanted to return the axe. What happened next, really pissed me off…
The cashier got on the PA system and asked for Brian. I knew Brian. He was the manager and he had helped me before on other hardware needs over the years. Let’s say we were familiar with each other. When he got to the counter, the clerk told him that I wanted to return the axe. Even though I used it for about an hour, it was in pristine shape. He took the axe and looked it over and asked, “What was wrong with it?” I told him I used it to cut roots and it could barely cut the root. He stood there with the axe and did not say any thing it seemed for 30 seconds. Then he said, “There is nothing wrong with it, so I cannot take it back.” I countered, “Wait because there is nothing wrong with it, you cannot take it back? That does not make sense!” He said customers do this a lot. They use a tool to take care of a job and then return it. He just accused me of being one of “those customers.” Then, he followed it up with the comment, “It is our store’s policy,” just to soften the blow of me being one of “those customers.” I thought since we knew each other for many years, he would not use the “store policy” argument. Even after explaining to him that it did not work and that I brought it back in great shape, he would not relent’
So, I went home with my worthless axe. Since I now owned it, I could do anything I wanted to do with it. When I got it home, I took it downstairs and used my grinder to get a razor-sharp edge on it. Once I was satisfied, I went back to my stump-removing project and successfully hacked off root after root. Efiwym, my wife, had moved on to other stumps to remove the dirt around them. As I moved to one stump to another, I was a man on a mission.
Eventually, I caught up with Efiwym and I got down on my hands and knees and joined her in the digging around the other stumps. It was getting late, and we decided to leave the rest until tomorrow. We hosed off the dirt on our arms and legs and headed into the house for a shower and some supper.