Unlikely Repair

My watch. 11/13/23 dwm

 It was a month or two ago that I stopped in the Batteries Plus Shop to get a battery for my dead watch.

 Before driving there I tried what we used to call a department store but while there were departments there wasn't service and the idea they might sell watch batteries was unlikely.

 Batteries Plus had a special going that night, offering free battery replacements for life in exchange for a one-time payment of $25.  It seemed like a good deal.

 I didn't expect to use it a few weeks later.  When the second-hand wasn't moving for the second time in two weeks, I decided I needed to return to the store and a different battery.

 After putting it on my wrist, it quickly re-set and worked fine but I didn't like the idea it was giving me problems so soon.

 When I walked in the store I told the man behind the counter, who I thought was an owner or manager, about the watch and waited for a new battery.

A short time later I heard a noise in the back room.  The man said my watch was missing a plastic circle that holds the battery in position.  What do you know, he saw one the right size sitting on the work bench.  Absent that device a battery can slip out of place.  

Was that little circle from my visit several weeks earlier?  

I don't know but it seems possible.  Maybe once the first repairman realized what happened after I left, he set it aside.  

The only reason I went back to the store was to claim a free battery.  If I hadn't bought the 'batteries for life' deal, I wouldn't have gone back to a place that sold bad batteries.  I guess it was a matter of 'right time... right place... right watch."