Sounds to me that you'd rather be mad than to ask what happened, John.

My father and one of my brothers were somehat like that.

One time I decided that my parents' kitchen needed painting so I went downtown to the small town hardware store and picked up a couple of cans of paint.

When it came time to paint the wall, the paint had so much 'tack' it wouldn't spread. So I took the cans back and told the owner my problem. He wasn't particularly nice about it - because he was p-Offed about it - but he told me he would notify his supplier. He refunded my money.

I went back to my folks' house and in the course of telling my brother and my dad about the paint, they both spouted off, saying they would never shop there again (Not that they ever had, most likely), and that I shouldn't have taken it back to the store. "People like that," they said, "just try to get away with things."

My point: I would rather assume that the owner would want to know so he could make it right.