This is not a baseball story, but there is some batting involved. Specifically, the kind of batting that is used in making quilts.

My wife is an award-winning quilter (yes, she is good, and no, she will never admit to being as good as she is), and needed a couple yards of batting for one of her projects. We have a neighbor whose children are younger than ours and doesn’t get to the stores as often, and my wife graciously offered to get her a yard while she was out.

At a certain crafting store that we reserve the right to name later, my wife asked for three yards of batting, cut into two-yard and one-yard lengths.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,  we can’t do that.”

What???

Apparently, store policy dictates you can’t get multiple pieces of the same fabric, just one chunk. When asked why this policy was necessary, my wife was told:

“We had a woman come in here and ask for 11 one-yard segments, and she ended up returning two of them for refunds.”

Well, it would seem to me that’s a shady transaction on the part of the buyer, but the appropriate policy adjustment might be to just not refund money on cut cloth. (After all, once it’s cut, you can’t un-cut it…)

My wife proceeded to buy her two yards, and left, determined to buy the other yard of batting at a competing store. While on the road, she called the manager, a clueless 20-something that we will, for the sake of fun, call “Skippy.”

Skippy has very little people skills, even less managerial aptitude, and from what we can determine, it’s a toss-up as to whether he knows less about marketing, word-of-mouth, or even quilting and crafts. Skippy didn’t offer to make it right, just stuck by the ‘policy’ the store itself had imposed.

My wife called me from the road, and started to feel bad. Not for the store, but for her friend who needed the batting. I advised her there might be a way to still get the batting and deliver the message that poor customer relations will not pay in the long run. I told her to get the name of a regional manager, and to take matters one level higher.

Back in the store, my wife encountered the same woman back with the batting, and is not entirely certain the woman even recognized her from an hour earlier. My wife asked for a yard of batting. As the employee measured it, she said:

“There’s just a little over a yard here, let’s just give you the rest.”

Well, maybe – just maybe – here is a little bit of contrition. A way to satisfy the customer who not long ago threatened to not come back. And it’s not like it cost the store anything to do it, because once you have a leftover piece that’s less than a yard, you’re likely just going to throw it away because it’s too small to be useful.

At the register, the batting rang up at $10.99, which was unexpected, since the price was $6.99 per yard.

“Ma’am, you have more than a yard here.”

My wife did not (as I would have fantasized) shove the batting down the employee’s throat and order her to sing opera. Instead, she marched her to the cutting block and got her yard, not an inch more.

So, store-to-be-named-later, you are on notice. You’ve got two strikes, one more and your outed.