What a refreshing meeting.
Both managers were waiting at the door for me to arrive. We walked around the store selecting a few similar toys from the small birds section on the way round while chatting about my birds and experience. Then we went upstairs to the office. Tea all round and a plate of biscuits then we set about doing what birds do - ripping the toys apart. We had scissors because we don't have beaks but we had some real fun in there. The toys we took off the shelves while not being easy to pull apart were made from short strands, certainly not long enough to 'hang' a bird, of tough natural leaf and Fibres. So, while being tough enough to take a good beaking, were short enough to consider safe and easy enough to pull from the bundle. Pretty happy there then.
Then I brought out the last one of these dangerous ones for them to look at. I did nothing, just sat back drinking my tea watching the managers play. They opened it up with the scissors and started trying to pull strands from the bundle. Those that were short enough to come free were fairly easy. Then, just as I hoped, the branch manager pulled a loop, and pulled as far as she could. She had a 9inch loop in her hand, couldn't find the ends and couldn't snap it. The area manager had to pull really hard to snap it. Neither was impressed and my case was proven.
Area manager was straight on a conference call asking all his fellows to withdraw this item and he will be contacting the supplier to see if they'll do a product recall.
Neither of them could apologise enough, for what me and Jack had been through. We sat down with fresh cups of tea and doughnuts and I am now a product tester for their area. Anything new will have to be tested by myself and my flock, and a couple of other testers before it even sees the shelves. Randomly a toy will be taken from normal stock for us to test for consistency.
So they get 'expert' opinions and my flock get the occasional free toy.
I was just happy at the product recall. I walked from the store with a month's free seed mix and some soft rope perches. I also carried a little pride.
It shows that no matter how large and powerful a corporation gets, there are still humans in there with common sense, a love for what they're doing, and a conscience.