ABSTRACT
After spending half a day in a domestic service agency in Beijing, I went home still mulling over the following anecdote from one of the migrant women I spoke to:
I went to CarreFour1 to buy a bottle of water, so I could keep the bottle for refills. It’s such a waste to buy one each time you’re thirsty. So I grabbed a small bottle of water from the shelf, thinking it would be the perfect size for carrying every day on my bike. But when I went through the check-out, I was shocked to find out how much it cost. It turned out I got the price wrong-it was 7.70 yuan, not 77 cents! Imagine that such a small bottle of water would cost 7.70 yuan! I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t want to pay that much for a bottle of water. The check-out girl looked really annoyed, as I was holding up the queue. Instead of canceling the item, she told me to pay first and then go to the customer service desk for a refund. So I did that, and said I was sorry I’d made a mistake but I’d like to get my money back. They told me with obvious displeasure that once a customer had bought a product, it couldn’t be refunded unless it was faulty. I was really embarrassed [zheng nan wei qing], but I didn’t want to leave without a refund, so I kept pestering them, apologizing again and again for causing trouble. Eventually, about half an hour later, they gave me the money-I could tell they wanted to get rid of me [she laughs]—but not without trying to teach me a lesson. They said, “Next time you take something from the shelf, make sure you can afford it. This bottle of water costs 7.70 yuan because it’s not an ordinary bottle of water. It’s Evian. It comes from France!2
