The other day, I had a student who really wanted to buy one of my alligator pencil cases (which I buy at the stationery store and sell to the students for alligator bucks).
"It's cute," she said.
We settled on a price of 50 alligator bucks. She named it 'Albert.'
She ran away contentedly to play with it.
When I saw her 2 hours later, she handed me the alligator pencil case.
"I'm done with it," she explained. "I want my 50 dollars."
"Wait a minute," I said. "You can't do that. Now it's used."
I had to explain the concept of used. "Who's going to buy a used alligator pencil case?" I asked.
In fact, Albert had managed to get noticeably dirty during his two hour fling. I pointed at the dirty white underside.
She would have none of it. "I don't want it."
After some debate, I finally agreed to give her a refund but with an "alligator rental fee" deducted, in the amount of 3 dollars. So I counted out a refund of 47 dollars.
She seemed happy with this.
I wonder if this could be a business model, moving forward?
[daily log: walking, 6 km]