the system works.

I feel a bit like a schmuck. kind of, but not really.

a couple months ago, one of our vendor reps came in and gave a demonstration on one of their lines, and offered everyone attending the meeting a free faucet from one of their other lines. idea being we take the faucet home, install it in our house, fall in love with it's greatness, and then sell them to everyone else. any faucet from the catalog, doesn't matter.

I picked a $300 kitchen faucet. it arrived today. very nice stainless steel faucet with a pull-out spray and matching soap dispenser. I have nowhere to put a $300 faucet.

so I took it to the big hardware box store up the street. told them it was a gift and I'd like to return it. no receipt? you'll have to take store credit. $208.00 is their price, plus sales tax. I now have a gift card to big hardware box store with $226.30 on it.

I'm going to turn around and sell it to a coworker for 75 cents on the dollar. he owns a house and buys shit there all the time.

I get $170 cash in my pocket (which I desperately need). coworker gets fifty plus bucks worth of free shit next time he buys something for his house. rep gets good PR because I'm going to be MUCH happier now than I would be with a dumb faucet ('sides, I already have the same brand, albeit twenty years old and crappy). everyone wins except the big faceless corporate hardware store. and even then, they'll just turn around and sell the damn faucet again, they just won't make $40 on this one...

I'm a schmuck. but I don't feel bad for massaging the system to my own benefit. I've got $8 to last me til payday on the fifteenth, I NEED that damn money...