It’s Our Policy is Another Version of, Because I Said So!

“It’s our policy,” is a manipulative ploy to claim authority, a version of, “Because I said so,” when dealing with someone whose tuition you’re not paying. It’s used to mask that a business has no justification for a position, whether it’s a restaurant refusing to seat an incomplete party or a store unwilling to accept a return fifteen days after a purchase even if the problem only presented beyond the expiration date of the stated “return policy.”

My response to “It’s our policy” is that I, too, have a policy and mine is not to honor the policies of others. I ask that we have a conversation without using the word, “policy.” This frustrates the employee who’s been trained to say, “It’s our policy” and nothing further. This person does not have an MBA and is not empowered to negotiate, so remains mute when I ask, “Have you ever considered that the only time someone says, “It’s our policy” is when what they’re saying makes no sense.

At this point one of us suggests I need to move to the next tier, the person who has the power to reason. Depending on the structure, this will be someone in Customer Relations or an employee known as “the supervisor” except in the case of The New York Sports Club, where there is only one person in the entire corporation trained at something other than training.

My determination generally pays off. I’ve had a few disappointments, generally with places that have initials, like the MTA or my HMO, but my success rate is impressive. I’m particularly proud of having persuaded a supervisor at Continental Airlines to give me a reasonably priced ticket moments before the flight was to depart by explaining I’m a post-menopausal woman and had mistakenly thought I’d paid for a ticket. I have a number of smaller victories, the most recent being a refund from Deluxe Car Rental for an unexplained charge. These do not amount to enough to buy a house in Tuscany but that’s not the issue since my husband has a policy of remaining in the city during the summer.