(no subject)
You have an apartment with fully carpeted stairs. You don't own a vacuum cleaner, and the stairs are getting pretty dusty. So you ask your friend to borrow her vacuum, and she lets you have it.
You return the vacuum with the cord damaged from where you had let the machine sit on the cord while you used the hose attachment to vacuum your stairs. It sat on it for at least twenty to thirty minutes, enough to completely chew through the outer covering of the cord in two places, each about two inches long. The machine still works, but the inner cords are exposed. Do you:
1) Apologize and offer to buy your friend a new vacuum.
2) Apologize and offer to buy your friend a roll of electrical tape to fix the cord.
3) Laugh about it and tell your friend she can easily fix it with electrical tape, so what's the big deal?
This happened to me many years ago, I was the friend. I got #3, and when I acted incredulous that she would return my vacuum in that condition so flippantly, she told me she couldn't afford to buy me a new vacuum or buy the electrical tape (I would have been perfectly happy with a roll of electrical tape) and how could I even ask for either one since it was just an accident!
(I remembered all of this just now when I was vacuuming my couch and had to move the cord from under the vacuum.)
You return the vacuum with the cord damaged from where you had let the machine sit on the cord while you used the hose attachment to vacuum your stairs. It sat on it for at least twenty to thirty minutes, enough to completely chew through the outer covering of the cord in two places, each about two inches long. The machine still works, but the inner cords are exposed. Do you:
1) Apologize and offer to buy your friend a new vacuum.
2) Apologize and offer to buy your friend a roll of electrical tape to fix the cord.
3) Laugh about it and tell your friend she can easily fix it with electrical tape, so what's the big deal?
This happened to me many years ago, I was the friend. I got #3, and when I acted incredulous that she would return my vacuum in that condition so flippantly, she told me she couldn't afford to buy me a new vacuum or buy the electrical tape (I would have been perfectly happy with a roll of electrical tape) and how could I even ask for either one since it was just an accident!
(I remembered all of this just now when I was vacuuming my couch and had to move the cord from under the vacuum.)