Can I return a defective employee?

Consumerist has a tale of a Best Buy employee claiming there are state and federal laws prohibiting Best Buy from refunding your money due to defective products.

Now that's chutzpah!

Here's my Best Buy story of the day. I go into their store looking to purchase a Keith Jarrett CD. Turns out there are exactly zero Keith Jarrett albums in the jazz section under J or K. I ask the clerk to look up Keith Jarrett on their computer system; he picks an album at random, sees that it is indeed a jazz album, and notes that the computer says that they have two copies in stock. We walk over to the jazz section and re-confirm that there are no such albums.

The clerk then has the audacity to tell me that "one of your fellow customers" must have misplaced the albums. Customer service FTW!