The tile is gone. Sent back, banished to the tile warehouse from whence it came. Au revoir, mosaic tile stupide. You proved nothing, you gave no pleasure, you you you... disappointed me. You sat so perfectly in your box, perfect, grout-free, sparkly. I loved you passionately licked you furtively every time I walked past your temporary home on the bench while I waited for you to become my walls of splendor. But the days turned into weeks and still you sat collecting dust on the bench. Nobody wanted to take you on. Reports and updates of my designer/coworker's fiasco using the same tile spread like fire.

'There must be a manufacturing error.'

Words like a knife in my heart. This couldn't be. So beautiful but dysfunctional, so impossible to install without error. The reports got worse. We see every seam. Grout-free means it must be error free except they won't interlock. Correcting it makes it worse. The tiles sink in too deep and can't be popped out.

'The entire back splash will have to come out', she reported.

Tile! Why did you have to be so poorly designed? WHY? Why couldn't you play well with other tiles? Prima Donna tile. My designer/coworker sent pictures of her client's kitchen to the tile store. It wasn't the first time they heard about the tile being too difficult to install. They were sorry about her client's back-splash and they would honour the return of my untouched, uninstalled, dust-covered boxes of the most beautiful, but diva-like tile on the planet.

We took it back today -made it ride in the hatch like an inanimate object rather than the work-of-art marble tile I was sold on. We hoisted you with great effort onto the counter and sadly turned you in. My eye began to wander at all the sparkly tile around and before I knew it I was smitten anew. The grey marble bullet strips spoke to me. Their tone was less diva, more alto or fifth business, It was a humble beckoning rather than an earnest 'lookatme!' The husband took to it straight away and since it was an even trade the deal went down rather painlessly.

We'll be picking up our new tile next week and getting it installed soon... hopefully without incident.