Yesterday I had to return a breast pump. It was a transaction I was dreading because I had to do it in Chinese. Normally I don’t have problems in stores. I speak enough Chinese to get by. But this was different. I had to convince a team of salesgirls to take back their pump and give me my 600 RMB, something they would resist.

Going into the situation I had a few things working in my favor. First of all, I had bought the breast pump just one day earlier. I had all the parts, a store receipt and a credit card receipt. I even brought the original shrink wrap back to the store.

Also, I bought the pump at Jusco. For those not familiar with the store, Jusco is on the high end of the retail food chain. There are a few fancier places in Qingdao, like Sunshine Center, which sells Gucci and Cartier, or the lobby of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, where you can buy Prada and Louis Vuitton, but Jusco is the ritziest full-service grocery and department store in this city. I expected to be treated with respect.

I went to the sales desk in the Baby Department and laid my breast pump on the counter. I wanted to explain to the sales girl that the little machine didn’t have enough power to do the job. I didn’t know whether it was a design flaw or a manufacturing defect but I would never be able to feed my baby with the feeble trickle of milk that came out when I used this pump. Furthermore, I wanted to tell her that my breasts were not the problem. My baby has grown from six to seventeen pounds drinking only my milk. But I didn’t have the Chinese to explain that to her.

“It no good.” I said to her in broken Chinese. “Milk no come. I have milk. Baby drink milk. This [gesture to pump] no give milk. It [make "vrrrm-vrrm" sound] but no milk. It no good.”

The sales girl looked at the open package and told me she could not take it back because it had been opened. I couldn’t understand all of her words but I still knew what she was telling me. I held firm.

“Yesterday I buy this but it no good. Milk no come. I give you this, you give me 600 RMB.”

She took me to a little room, off to the side of the Baby Department. I thought I was waiting for the manager. No manager came. The sales clerk came back with a twenty-year-old girl who spoke some English. There were two other girls who came, too. They didn’t do anything, they were just there to see how the train wreck resolved itself.

My translator told me that they would send the pump back to the factory for inspection. If the manufacturer confirmed that it didn’t work then they would give me my money back. I didn’t accept that. “I don’t care, it’s not my problem, I just want my money back,” I told my translator.

My translator laughed nervously and tried to explain the store’s policy but I wasn’t having any of it. “I want to talk to the manager,” I said.

We sat there for almost an hour while the original sales clerk called various managers by cell phone. None of them were responding. She eventually found a manager who was willing to pick up his phone. He told them not to give me my money back. They would have to send the pump back to the factory first.

I wasn’t going anywhere until I got my refund.

The salesgirl finally said, “If you will show us and it doesn’t work, then you can return it and get your money back.”

“You want me to show you right here?!”

“Yes. Right over here.”

They were probably bluffing. They thought I would never lift my shirt to demonstrate my pumping technique in front of them. They were wrong. I would see their bluff and they would see my boobs.

The room we occupied didn’t have a door, so the sales floor was visible from where we sat. They raised a blanket in front of the door and I whipped out old-reliable lefty. I turned the pump on. Nothing came out. There wasn’t much more they could say.

The ordeal wasn’t over yet. I still had to go down to the return desk to join the mob of people trying to get their money back. There was no queue so we all had to defend our positions with our elbows. But at least this time I didn’t have to show anyone my tits.