The Pottery Barn rule is American jargon alluding to a "you break it, you buy it" policy, by which a retail store holds a customer responsible for damage done to merchandise on display.
In reality, Pottery Barn—the upscale home furnishing stores in the United States—does not have a "you break it, you bought it" policy, but rather writes off broken merchandise as a loss, as do most large American retailers. Many U.S. states have statutes forbidding such policies (absent negligence or willful destruction). Legal doctrine also holds that a retailer incurs the risk that merchandise will be destroyed by placing it where customers can handle it and not doing anything to discourage them.
Read more about Pottery Barn Rule: Origin and Usage
Famous quotes containing the words pottery, barn and/or rule:
“There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains its maxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan and watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to the falling rain, and crouch for warmth beneath the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things—but not so dismal as the wandering up and down where shelter is, and beds and sleepers are by thousands; a houseless rejected creature.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“It is a rule of creative ability that it does nothing of any value, while it is possessed by this afflatus of vanity.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)