Business Law and the Real World

I'm getting my car checked out right now because when I get out sometimes, the mirrors move and when I get back in and look in them, all I see is the pavement below my car. Then I fix it, get it just right, and I turn it off, get back in and they're facing the sky. It never does it when I'm watching, and it doesn't happen every time. It's really annoying, so I thought I'd bring it in. I felt stupid trying to explain it to the guy here. The woman told me she would run me through and tell me how to move my mirrors, like I just didn't know how!

So anyways, I'm reading my law book here, and it made me laugh.

I'm not sure if I told you the story about my painfully short dress that I wore in Eleanor's wedding this summer. It was super cute, but the length was down to my mid-calf, and so all of the bridesmaids got it hemmed up to right above our knee. I was in Knoxville and didn't know who to take it to, and I saw a nice-looking place that had a nice name, so I took it in.

I told the man there that I wanted it right above my knee. I tried it on, told him I was wearing it in a wedding, so I didn't want it very short.

Fast forward three days (9 days before the wedding), I pick up the dress and it is literally 2 feet long. I looked at it and PANICKED. He told me to try it on to see if I like. I said, okay. I held the tears back as I zipped it up. I couldn't even walk outside the dressing room to show him, because I was too embarrassed to wear it in front of people.  It was shorter than my nike shorts, which are not long. The back was shorter than the front, and my underwear showed the back (especially when I walked).

I never tell people that I am unhappy with them, I usually let it slide as much as I can. But this time, I got up my nerve to tell him that it was way too short. His reply, "You look like you like short dress." 

I held it up so that he could see it, and I showed him how short it was and how short I had told him. He told me that I asked for it to be that length. I told him that I would have never asked for it to be that length! 

After much conversing and no sympathy, he told me that I would still have to pay $35 for it. Yes, I had to pay money for that dress/shirt! I paid $120 for the dress originally, spent $35 on it for alterations, and I wasn't even going to be able to wear it. I couldn't walk down an aisle in that in front of my entire family.

Anyways, I asked for the material that he cut off, which was about a foot. I calmly left and then called mom to figure out what to do. I took it home to her the next morning and we got to work with her sewing machine. We couldn't add the material back to the end because of the seams, so we had to put another layer under the dress, connected to the liner. It was confusing, but it didn't look too bad--a little different than everyone else's, and still very short. We couldn't add too much length because the layer thing looked weird. 

I was really insecure about my short dress the entire night. I couldn't ever bend down and had to be sure to walk really still. From the pictures, look and see the bridesmaids--conservative, conservative, conservative, conservative, WOAH! conservative, conservative, conservative...

Well, this morning, in the BMW dealership, I was reading my Business Law book for class. Let me just quote The Legal Environment of Business. "When the subject matter of a contract is personal, a contract to be performed to the satisfaction of one of the parties is conditioned, and performance must actually satisfy that party. For example, contracts for portraits, works of art, and tailoring are considered personal." 

I should have gotten that $35 back! I'm not sure that I had a contract with the man, but I probably did have an implied contract. I will keep reading to find out, but I'm pretty sure that he shouldn't have made me pay.

$35 wasted!