Month: July 2023

How will you ever know if the reason for that silly paint mix-up was merely asinine?

It’s quite possible the truth will blow your mind…

“Hey, listen up, Koko,¹I can’t remember her name, but it was something along the lines of being borderline ridiculous I was just in there buying paint from you, and you totally sold me the wrong color.”

I was on the phone with the paint department of my semi-local Home Depot, and somebody was about to get the wrong end of my Righteous Indignation Stick. And that ‘somebody’ was gonna be Koko–after all, she was the one directly responsible for the painting pickle I was in.

Oh, that’s right–you’ve walked into the middle of yet another one of my Remodeling Shenanigans stories. If you’re just now joining us, and missed last week’s broadcast, you can catch up and read that post here.

The short version of the story is that I was trying to get Home Depot to color-match a specific color of paint–HGSW2507: PaperKraft to be seemingly overly precise–and despite my objections, Koko more or less forced me to go home with 3 cans of this paint color:

What’s so wrong with this picture is that the paint is supposed to match the color of the wall in the background. But from the samples on the lid, it is clear that we got Shanghai’d into buying a lovely shade of “baby diarrhea brown” instead of the much less ocularly offensive Paper Kraft. And, as a reminder, Koko had insisted that “the paint will get lighter as it dries”, which all now know was a load of baby bullsh*t.

And I was going to let ol’ Koko hear all about it. Hence, my phone call/airing of my grievances.

“Oh, it was the wrong shade? Ok, bring it back in then,” was her annoyingly calm reply.

“Well, I can’t exactly do that–it’s a 40 minute drive for me, and I’m about to be in the middle of putting my girls down for the night. But I need the right paint no later than first thing tomorrow morning. I don’t know exactly what I want you to do, but whatever it is I need done stat!”

I then proceeded to theorize at great length that perhaps she had accidentally used a darker white base paint, and that is how we ended up with the suspiciously fecal-esque paint.

“No, that was the right base. It’s what’s used for most colors except the lightest ones…like off-white,” was her response.

“Off-white! Exactly! That’s what I’m trying to tell you! Paper Kraft is and off-white color! I swear, we need to be using the Ultra Pure White base…though that sounds almost racist now that I saw it aloud…” I trailed off, distracted by my own thoughts.

“Look, Mon, just bring the paint back in as soon as you can and I’ll fix it by adding the right tint or whatever it takes. See you tomorrow?”

“Okay, well, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to be able to fix it by adding anything, but you’re dang straight I’m going to be bringing this paint back to you. Not tomorrow, but probably Tuesday after I get off work.”

“Great. Just bring it back in as soon as you get the chance, and we’ll get you taken care of…”

“Hmmm…I’m not really satisfied with the idea that she just used the wrong base,” I pondered aloud to myself paint, “and I’m pretty sure I’m not crazy–Paper Kraft is off-white, right? This requires some more investigation…let’s see what happens when I do a DuckDuckGo image search for PaperKraft paint…”

First that popped up before my inquiring eyes confirmed that I was right to be full of righteous anger, and I wasn’t just being a self-righteous bastard:

Surely, you, too, Dear Reader, can clearly see all the off-white samples there on the bottom row. Statistically speaking, “Paper Kraft” can only be interpreted as an off-white, not sh–wait just tick… *scrolls down a hair*

“Wait, what’s this??? I’d recognized that sewer-water shade from a mile away! What is the name of this horrid hue most foul?!?” I did do declare to my computer screen.

Let me zoom in for you playing along at home:

“You gotta be effin’ kidding me–‘Craft Paper‘???” I continued my monologue. “What a bunch of buttholes to go and have ‘Paper Kraft’ and ‘Craft Paper’! Who does that? Sherwin Williams, you Sher-win are a big jerk!”

Yeah, that’s not just setting us all up to fail or nothin’…well, at least now I had a better scientific theory as to how such a royal funk-up could happen with the paint codes…

“Say there, My Beautiful Bride, any chance you’ll be going be a Home Depot on your way to feed Roberta’s cats?”

It had only recently occurred to me that while I wouldn’t be in the geographic vicinity of the offending Home Depot any time in the next couple of days, the wife was going to be going right past one on her way to feed her former boss’s cats that evening. (I won’t go into the whole multi-thousand dollar cat-sitting gig that she had found herself suckered into–that’s a story for another time…just thought I would vaguely mention it though…)

“Yeah, I suppose so. You need me to pick up anything?” she replied through the static of her cellphone.

“You bet I do! I think I figured out the whole paint situation, and I think I get the right color made. I’ll call up their paint department first and make sure they got things straight. You should be able to pick it up on your way back.”

“Okie-dokie!” I’m pretty sure she said before hanging up.

At that point I got on the horn with paint department of this other, hopefully more helpful, Home Depot. A mature gentlemen picked up on the other end of the line.

“Paint department, how can I help you?”

At this point I’ll spare you the play-by-play detail of this phone call, but I’ll try to break down the key moments. First of all, my dude said he could pull up codes, but the system didn’t allow him to preview them. That was a pain in the neck, since I couldn’t ask him to describe to me what to expect from anything he might pull up.

Speaking of ‘pull up’, he eventually discovered that there were two ‘Paper Krafts’ in the system, though it remains unclear whether one of them was spelled with a ‘C’ instead of a ‘K’. And, to his amazement, when he looked at the ‘recipe'²The different amounts of the primary colors that are mixed into the base white paint. Much like an RGB code, for you ----- nerds out there. they produced two very different colors.

He totes be like:

“I knew it!” I said in that particular moment, feeling rather vindicated. Though I have to admit, I wasn’t too pleased about my knack for finding the proverbial ‘Glitch in the Matrix’ in the computer systems of home improvement stores (there a couple of untold stories involving me absolutely breaking the point-of-sale system over at Lowe’s–involuntarily, of course).

We then proceeded to mix the color recipe in our imaginations, trying to figure out which one was going to be the correct off-white Paper Kraft. Funny enough, I did actually have the Sherwin Williams (not HGSW) recipe in front of me, on the old can of paint I had found in our garage from the 2021 remodel. Not so funny enough, Home Depot has a completely different recipe system, so it was like the home improvement version of the Tower of Babel.

Eventually, we nailed down with 98.7% confidence which Paper Kraft was the right one I needed.

“Okay…so can I put in an order for this color while you have it in front of you, and then have my wife pick it up in an hour or so?” I requested, self-assured that I had finally slayed this beast.

“Oh, no, we can’t do that. We don’t take orders over the phone. No sir…we’ve mixed the wrong color too many times that way, so now the policy is that somebody must be standing here in person ordering it.”

“Jeez, you gotta be kidding me, after all we’ve been through together and what it’s taken to get us to this point? How can I have any assurance that the right recipe gets mixed up when she shows up?”

“I’ll leave a note,” he stated flatly.

“Um…okay. I guess. Well, can I get your name, in case she runs into any trouble?”

“Oh, sure, my name’s Robert,” paint department Robert informed me.

“Hah! I’m a Robert, too! That’s gotta be good sign…right?” narrator-of-this-story BJ quipped.

“Indubitably.”

“One last thing…how do I get my money back?”

Silly me, I about forgot to ask the Million Dollar Divided By 6666.667 Question.

“No problem–that was clearly an error due to our system. Bring it in and we’ll refund it for you.”

“Shucks, Robert, you are the best! I’ll do that as soon as I get the chance.”

..and from there, everything went as smooth as the bowel movement of a meat-eater who’s just popped an Ex-Lax suppository…

…

…

JK Kidding, of course it didn’t go smoothly from there. After that I had put in an online order for the base paints, and had instructed My Beautiful Bride to pick them up from the Pick Up desk, and then take them to the paint department to have her prepaid paint mixed up.

Well, she hung out from 7 to 8 pm for one of us to get the text notification that the online order was ready for pickup, before giving up and heading home literally seconds before I finally got it at 8:16 pm. She was already halfway home and told me “Fuck it–I got feed Roberta’s fat-ass cats in the morning. I’ll pick it up on my way back then.”

Anyways, I eventually did get the paint later in the day that I had over-optimistically estimated that I would need it, though–surprise, surprise–I didn’t actually end up painting anything until 3 or 4 days later.

Welp…with that out of the way, the only left to do to get full resolution is the easy-peasy task of returning the poo-poo paint and getting my $150 back…

Stay tuned…

Content created on: 28/29/30 July 2023 (Fri/Sat/Sun)

Painting your mom’s new pad is an honorable task.

But whatever you do, son, at least make sure it doesn’t end up looking like a**…

“So, Mom, what color would you like me to paint your walls?”

After making endless decisions-by-committee related to remodeling our Farmstead out in the country, I was more than happy to delegate one to an individual. No debating, no hemming and hawing, no compromise. Only one person’s opinion to consider. Could it possibly get any simpler than that?

And while my mother isn’t the most decisive person on the block, you gotta give her credit for recognizing that and at least attempting to mitigate it. The classic indecisive move here would have been, “I don’t care, whatever you want.” Which, of course, we all know is the most aggravating answer one might receive when attempting to consider the desires of another person.

Instead, what she did was pure genius: in her reply she added two tiny letters to that phrase and turned the paint world upside down: “I don’t care, whatever you wanted.”

“Yeah,” she continued, “whatever color it is that you have in your living room now will work for me up in the Loft.”

I couldn’t believe it–it was like music to my ears: a pre-made decision. Two years ago we had remodeled our house in town and in the process had much of it painted, which meant that I was pretty sure I had unequivocal evidence of our previous paint choice–a ‘light light beige/brown’, or, alternatively, an ‘off off-white’–either in my emails to the contractor, or in the form of a spare can of paint lying around in our garage.

Yup, there sure is something special about knowing exactly what you want.

And in this case, what we wanted was “HGSW2507 Paper Kraft”, to be exact…

“So I understand that this the Home Depot paint department–I saw the big orange sign out front when I came in–but is there any chance you could color match a paint code from, say, Lowe’s?”

I don’t know why I felt so silly asking the question, since pretty much any major home improvement place or paint store will color match any color from all the other major brands. In fact, that’s what happened the first time around. While “HGSW” in our code of interest stands for “HGTV by Sherwin Williams”, it’s actually Lowe’s that carries those colors, and not your local Sherwin Williams paint store. But when our contractor back in ’21 insisted on using Sherwin Williams, he had no problem getting them to whip up a batch of Paper Kraft.

My current dilemma centered around the fact that pretty much every can of paint sold by both Sherwin Williams and Lowe’s is loaded with crap-quality product. Or at least according to the Gospel of Consumer Reports Ratings. So I was dead-set on using something of much better quality, Behr Marquee–which as you may have already figured out, was sold by Home Depot.

“Of course, we can! What color did you need?” replied the older Jamacain emigre behind the paint desk.

A wave of relief washed over me. Here I had been fretting about how to get the right color–silly me! I had just wasted the last hour sitting in my car in the parking lot, perusing ‘Paint Color Matching’ websites, the whole while telling my two daughters “Patience, children! Daddy just needs a few more minutes to figure out what color to ask for…” a good 15+ times (side note: do I smell the childhood trauma wrought by too many broken parental promises brewing here? Indubitably).

“What are these Paint Color Matching websites of which you speak?” you ask? Well, in theory it sounds pretty simple: you tell the interwebs your color code and what brand of paint you would really like to use, and it tells you the name of the color that is the closest match in your chosen brand. It would be great if it actually worked, but usually you just end up more frustrated and confused than when you started.

If it did work, though, I feel like it is a much safer bet to do it this way, especially in our case where we didn’t need the paint for the Loft to be a perfect match to our living room walls in town. As my logic goes, at least if I ask Home Depot to give me their “Periwinkle Blue”, for example, I can be pretty sure I’m going to get what they advertise as Periwinkle Blue. However, if you ask them to interpret another company’s paint code, then there was much more room for error–and the possibility for the paint dude or dudette to point the finger at you in the case that things were to go awry.

“Great! Can I give you the paint code?” I asked her.

“No, no, just give me the name, and it will automatically pull up the code,” she replied.

“Okay, then, it’s ‘Paper Kraft’…” I paused for a moment, wondering if I should clarify that ‘Kraft’ begins with ‘K’ and not ‘C’ in this case.

“Ah, yes, here it is…HGSW2507?”

I glanced down at the note on my phone.

“Yes, 2507–that’s the one!” I confirmed with confidence.

Given that paint codes are unique, I could rest easy that we had successfully met the challenge of getting the exact color of paint I needed, from the brand that I wanted.

“Come back in about 10 minutes and that’ll be ready for you sir…”

“Huh, that’s odd. This seems a lot darker than I remember our walls at home being. Are you sure this is Paper Kraft?”

I stared at the little smear of color that they daub on the label of mixed paint cans so you can verify it looks as it should. And what should it look like on the cans of paint I was about to buy? Well, it didn’t look so much as an ‘off off-white’ but more of a ‘poopy crap-brown’.

“Yes, I’m absolutely sure that’s HGSW2507. That’s what you wanted, right?” she said with an air of no-nonsense.

“Yeah…” I just kept staring at it. Something seemed mighty amiss here. “…but that is waaaaaaay too dark. That can’t be it.”

“Oh, don’t worry it will get lighter as it dries,” she said, somewhat dismissively.

“Really? I don’t think it could possibly get light enough…”

“I assure you, sir, that it will get lighter,” she said firmly.

“Man, I really don’t remember our walls being this dark. Let me try to find a picture of our walls at home…”

She just stood there tapping her finger impatiently, while I discovered that I had taken exactly zero pictures in or near our living room in the past 3-4 months.

“Well?!?” she inquired indignantly.

“Ummm…well…I haven’t found a good pic of it yet,” I stammered nervously.

Was she gaslighting me, or was I crazy? Maybe our walls were darker than I seemed to recall? After all, what was she going to do if I asked her to do it again? She was going to use the exact same code, and therefore the exact same formula of various tints and hues, and we all knew we would end up with the same sh*t-brown that was guaranteed to “get lighter as it dries.”

“Trust me, it’s the right color–it’s the code you verified with me you wanted, and in the paint world, the code might as well be the Word of The Jesus” she assured me with a mix of confidence and impatience.

Not knowing what else to do–besides curse my early-onset dementia?–I took my 3 cans of dubious paint and headed to the checkout.

“She better be right about this,” I muttered to myself. “With all the progress tomorrow that my well-experienced buddy Matt assured me he and I would make on the Loft, we’re definitely going to need that paint ready to go…”

“Oh, son of a biscuit–I knew I wasn’t crazy!”

Back home, I decided the best way to check if I had the right color was to hold up the paint can next to my wall and take a picture.

And, you, too, would be dropping an adult potty word or two if you were staring at this:

That’s my living room wall in the background, and in the foreground, you can see the schmears o’sh*t that are clearly not even remotely close to being the same color.

Oh, and you can also see where I accidentally dropped the lid in the paint itself. Only moments earlier I had gone out into our garage and dug up the can of leftover paint we had from the 2021 remodel, and opened them both up to compare the two. You know, in the off chance that it was indeed really dark before drying to a much, much lighter white. (Spoiler alert: the paint in the older can was as Caucasian as they come.)

Well, at least the good news is that I wasn’t effin’ crazy. Bad news was that I was stuck with a color that almost made my poor mother vomit when she saw it–“It looks like a baby had diarrhea,” were her exact words, I believe–and I didn’t have the time to trek the 40 minutes each way to Home Depot and back just get the right color.

Oh, technology, how could have you possibly screwed me thusly? How?!?

‘Tis a mystery indeed. One that we will investigate next time. So stay tuned, Dear Readers! Because I know that you’re just dying to know how this one ends.

I’ll give you hint, at least. Until next time, I leave you with these cryptic words: way too many Roberts get involved…

Content created on: 20/22/23 July 2023 (Thurs/Sat/Sun)

It’s a common problem for guys with large packages like me.

Not everyone is prepared to handle the length or girth–at least not adequately…

“Logistics Emergency! Logistics Emergency! For the love of God, open the door, please!”

I banged on the door of my new country neighbors, praying to any deity that would listen that they would take pity on my pathetic soul and let me borrow their big-ass pickup they use for hauling their horsies around.

I finally had those coveted shower walls within my grasp, but now, thanks to some dumb-ass at the trucking company that was supposed to be delivering them, they were about to slip right through my fingers. And then they would be gone forever…

…

Okay, Outkast, not forever ever, just until, like the next Tuesday or Wednesday. But, here’s the deal: in 3 days–on Monday, to be precise–I would be moving my mother into her new place out in the country, the so-called Farmstead, and she sure as sh*t would need to have a functioning shower awaiting her.

Moments earlier, I had been slaving toiling away on her new digs, “The Loft”, just waiting for the call from the delivery driver that all was well and he would be dropping off the new shower walls before pulling the trigger and ripping out the old shower. And the call came.

“Yo, yo, yo! Dr. Builds-A-Loft, distant cousin of Sir Mix-A-Lot, speaking! What’s poppin’, mother-trucker?” my enthusiasm for construction materials was oozing, no doubt.

“Wait, what did you call me? Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I need to know about your place…you live in a suburban development or what?” the M.T.–that’s short for mother-trucker–asked stoically.

“Suburbs? Pfft! We country livin’ out here! You don’t have to worry about bothering any neighbors with your delivery vehicle,” I was almost offended he used the S-word.

“Like, is your road paved? Lot’s of trees?”

“Nah, just a gravel road, baby. And yeah we got trees. I would even say we have a plethora of trees, Jefe. That’s a Three Amigos reference for ya, buddy!” Oh, the presumptive hubris of mine.

“Yup, lots of trees was what Google Maps was showing me. And, uh, is it a dead end?”

“Only one way in, only one way out–a private oasis all our own! Umm…why do you ask?” I was starting to become suspicious of all his dang questions.

“Yeah…so, here’s the deal: I’m pulling a 53′ trailer behind my rig. There’s no way I’m getting out of there if I take my truck down your drive.”

“Huh? What? But I selected ‘Free Delivery’ when I bought it on Lowe’s website…”

“Sorry, Bud. I’m in Town now just across from the Lowe’s. Your package is pretty big…says here it’s what…300 lbs? If you have a pickup with a decent bed, maybe you could meet me here? Or do you know one someone who has one you could borrow?”

Dammit, so much for free shipping. I could tell this was going to cost me dearly–if nothing else, I wasn’t going to get any more work done for the day, despite it being only 4 pm. I had a fancy school fundraiser to go to at 7, and My Beautiful Bride wouldn’t tolerate me monkeying around with anything related to remodeling past 5 or 5:30.

“Well…my reclusive neighbors have a big ol’ farm truck, but dangit, wouldn’t you know it, I don’t have there cell phone numbers. But you know what I do have? A house there in Town, a few blocks from where you’re at now. Could we just drop it off there for now?”

For some context, I had a new fridge that was set to be delivered that same morning, but those particular jerks¹”Jerks”–you know, short for “complete jerk-offs”. decided to call from a random number and then not leave a message, so I wasn’t able to be there when they showed up at 9 am. And now I wasn’t going to be getting that fridge for almost another week. So I knew how this delivery game is played. And I wasn’t letting this Moby ----- out of my sights.

“Hmmm..maybe. I’ll need to call my boss and get his approval. In the meantime, I suggest you try to find a pickup with a decent-sized bed…”

“Lowe’s customer service, Assistant Manager Paul speaking…”

Oh for f***’s sake. Not this asshole again. I needed somebody who was willing to bend the rules for me. I had little hope Paul would work with me.

Why was I at the mercy of this dip-sh*t? Well, first off, I’m sure you’ve deduced by now that my borderline-hoarder neighbors didn’t answer the door when I came a knockin’–though they were clearly home.

And then as I hauled tail in my tiny CRV into Town, I got on the horn with M.T., only to be informed that he had unhooked his trailer and gone by my Town house and that wasn’t an option either.

“Too narrow of roads, and way too many trees,” he informed me.

And when I rolled up to where he had left his trailer–ironically at the entrance to my neighborhood–I realized that, once again, my ability to estimate distance and size wasn’t the greatest. A 53′ trailer is not only 53′ long, but dang was it tall! Like maybe 20′? Again, I’m not the best at accurately eyeballing these things, so maybe close to 14′–but a really, really, tall 14′.

It was at that point we had concocted the plan to ask Lowe’s if we could drop it off there, and then I could come back the next day or so and pick it up.

Now, this wasn’t an outrageous request at all, especially since those butt-faces were the ones who promised free delivery to begin with. In fact…

True story: I had actually ordered two sets of shower wall panels. This was the second one. When I had ordered the first one online, it initially told me that Free Delivery was an option, but when I went to place the order, I got some bizarre message indicating that home delivery was…illegal? Yup, that’s the word that the error message used, though I’m thinking it was ‘illegal’ in the sense of a bug in the webpage’s code that wasn’t allowed.

So for the first set of walls, I was forced to select “Pick up in-store”. Then, when I decided to go ahead and update the shower in the Loft the following day–with a slightly different pattern–I was elated to see that they allowed me to select Free Delivery this time around. How convenient!

Now, back to my conversation with Paul. It wasn’t like I just called up Lowe’s and got the right person immediately, though. Instead, I got looped through to the same person 3 times and disconnected at least once before I managed to get someone with an ounce of authority on the phone. Just my luck, I get the guy with an inferiority complex.

“So you see, Paul, funny thing happened…” I said as I delved right into all the asinine details that comprised the lead up to my predicament.

When I eventually finished explaining the sitch (as the kids these days call a ‘situation’) in its full glory, Paul reacted much as expected.

“Unfortunately, we can’t help you. The delivery truck can only drop it off at the address on the package.”

“Wait, is that Lowe’s policy? Or the trucking company’s policy?” I inquired as politely as I could, given the fact that Paul was now giving me a second reason to punch him in his fat neck.

“Sorry, that’s not our policy, it’s the delivery company’s rules.”

“But that’s no problem–my driver already got cleared to drop it off wherever I told him–“

“Sorry, but we can’t help you. We can’t be responsible for some random delivery that’s not in our system.”

“You gotta be ----- kidding me, Paul. Seriously? I ordered the ----- thing from Lowe’s. Are you not this Lowe’s we speak of?”

“I can’t let you have it delivered here. Anything else I can help you with today?”

“Yeah, there is one thing…do you have any of those giant screws for concrete pillars?”

“Sure do. They’re called anchors, I think.”

“Okay, great then. Can you do me a favor, Paul? Can you go back to where you keep them, pull one out, drop your pants, and…”

The line went dead all of a sudden.

At least all y’all playing along at home know dang well what I was imploring him to do…

“Uhhh, I don’t know if my boss will be cool if I just drop off 300 pounds and $1300 worth of shower walls just on the side of the road.”

I stared the the delivery driver dead in the eyes.

“Drop it here, and drop it now…”

Oh, shenanigans. What a pickle I’ve found myself in…

The point of the story is, sadly, the burden is on the customer’s shoulders to make sure that the delivery company puts our items on the appropriately-sized truck. Seriously. Be pro-active about it. Any time you have an above-average sized item coming your way–one where you get a call from the delivery guys the day before–when you have them on the line, interrogate the living daylights out of the rep on the other end. Give them every last detail of where you expect them to deliver it, and even then don’t trust them to get it right. Keep nagging them, perhaps threatening them even.

Oh, what’s that? You sense a wee hint of bitterness in my words, do you? Great job, Captain Obvious. If you’re still wondering why I might be bit of a crank in such matters, then swing back by next week, and I’ll regale you with, as the late great Paul Harvey would say, “the rrrrrrrest of the story…”

Content created on: 6/8/9 July 2023 (Thurs/Sat/Sun)

Gather around kids, dim the lights down low.

Let me tell you all about how a trip to the local hardware store nearly came to blows…

“Welp, I about got into a fist-fight with a couple of Lowe’s employees today…”

This, unfortunately, would not be the last time I would find myself uttering such words to My Beautiful Bride upon coming home from a long day of remodeling the new place we recently bought for our parents out in the countryside.

Sure, I knew that 5 unexpectedly long months of fixing up “The Farmstead”¹A portmanteau of “The Farm” and “Homestead”, “The Farmstead” is what we’re currently calling the place out of the collective laziness that we have been unable to overcome in giving the new property a proper, cute/fun name. wouldn’t be straight-forward, but one could at least hope that the process would be as boring and peaceful as an episode of This Old House. Ah, only a naive youth could dream such dreams.

Meanwhile, here in the real world–or at least the shenanigan-filled sh*t-storm that seems to follow me around like a cloud that we around here simply refer to as ‘my life’–any random supply run to the local hardware store could turn into an episode of The Jerry Springer Show without even a moment’s notice.

“What in the world could make you wanna knock someone’s lights out?” you may be asking your phone or tablet screen right now, hoping somehow that I will hear your thoughts across the aether of the interwebs.

Well, I will tell you, Dear Reader, what could cause such chaos in my world: a six-pack–of LED wafer lights, that is…

“Here, here is your daily diverse assortment of home-improvement supplies,” the woman running the Lowe’s online pick-up desk said as she handed me a box of doo-dads and other what-nots.

I didn’t think much about it at the time, but a small part of my brain picked up on the fact that they had just thrown everything into a medium-sized random boxed, instead of the regular plastic bags. This fateful fact would come into play later.

“Thanks. But first, I don’t need a particular item, so I can just return it now?” I said, setting the box back down at the register.

“Sure, thang, Sweetheart,” my clerk said with pretty strong grandmother vibes.

After a moment of sifting through the box, she found the item and worked her magic to credit the $25 back to my card of payment.

“Okay, see you!” I said as I picked up my awkward-to-carry box of crap and headed off into the store to meet Popo,²That’s my daughters’ name for their grandfather. I normally wouldn’t go around calling another grown-ass man ‘Popo’ if not for such mitigating factors. my father-in-law and occasional remodeling accomplice. You see, I had a whole list of items I had forgot to include in my online order, and was definitely going to need him at check-out so we could get his sweet, sweeeet 10% military discount.

“You wanna put that box in the cart?” Popo said when he first saw me.

“Heck no!” I replied without missing a beat. “This is my box of precious goods! I don’t want them to think I haven’t already paid for these. I’ll keep cumbersomely carrying it around, thank you very much…”

“Hmmm…that’s odd, I don’t think I remember seeing the lighrts anywhere…better check my Mary Poppins Box…”

It was almost the end of another hard day of handy-manning it up when I realized that I needed to have the lights ready to go for when the electrician showed up the next morning. I had been so busy with plumbing and carpentry, that it had totally fallen off my radar.

Well, now the problem was that the lights I ordered were particular awesome because they were so thin–hence, the moniker ‘wafer lights’. This was great when it came to installing them just about anywhere in the ceiling, regardless of joists and whatever other items overhead that would otherwise interfere with your traditional ‘can lights’. The issue here was that since they were smaller than average, I had no idea how large or how small a 6-pack of those bad boys might be.

I carefully went through the items in The Box, and it became clear that there was no way that my lights could have ever been buried in there without me knowing. It looked like that my friendly Lowe’s clerk had accidentally forgotten to give me that one tiny item.

“No prob, Bob!” I thought to myself as I headed home with intentions to pop in at Lowe’s along the way, “I’m sure they have my lost package loafing about the front desk somewhere, and they will easily take care of a repeat customer such as myself!”

Famous last words if I ever heard them…

“No. No, I don’t understand. I paid for an item, and I never got it. Of course I want my ----- item!”

Usually proud of my ability to keep my cool with strangers, I was getting even more aggravated by how aggravating Lowe’s customer disservice was being in this moment.

I mean, I swear, the nerve of the clerk–a different one than from earlier–she actually had the gall to say to my face “We have no way to prove that you don’t actually have it. So there’s nothing we could do about it. I’m sure you understand.”

She had already checked the section where they keep online orders until they’re picked up, and to my surprise she had found no trace of it back there. But now she was saying there was nothing she could do since–and I repeat, this completely true–“I could just be claiming I didn’t get it when I really did.”

They had messed up, and instead of trying to make it right, they decide to go with an argument that is virtually impossible for me to disprove.

So I explained to her again that I had only received the one box from them, and clearly remember walking around with the singular box and that there was no way I could have actually had the LED lights and perhaps set them down somewhere in the store without realizing it. They. Were. Simply. Never. In. My. Possession.

In response, she busted out the checklist from order, that had been manually ticked off as the ‘puller’ (as they call them) pulled each item off the store floor/shelf and into the cart.

“See, it’s checked off right here. So that shows that you got the lights.”

“What?!? That doesn’t prove y’all actually handed them over to me.”

“Yes, you signed off on it, so…”

“I DIDN’T SIGN ANYWHERE. Jeez.” At this point I had never been so publicly agitated (at least since The Miracle Whip Incident). “You know dang well that not a single one of your customers goes through their order item-by-item before leaving. It’s a little thing called ‘I trust that your didn’t ----- up my order’. You’re welcome.”

“I’m not sure what you want me to do,” she said, a bit too smugly.

That was a pretty stupid question. But you know what was a much more valid question? This (with all apologies to my dear mother):

Instead of posing this question aloud, I sighed heavily and asked a much more polite question:

“Can I talk to your manager?”

“Okay, whatever. I don’t think he’s going to tell you anything different though…”

I was inching closer to answering the Wayne Brady Question, I tell you what.

“Just get him or her, please.”

“Sure.” She leaned back and hollered into a little room off to the side. “PAUL! Paaaaaul! This customer wants to talk to you.”

Paul? I don’t think I had interacted with him yet, which is a bit of a statistical surprise, given how many times I had frequented this particular Lowe’s. I had no doubt though that he would be able to take care of me, just like managers and assistant managers had in the past, no matter how convoluted of a problem I presented them.

“I’m the assistant manager here and, uh, yeah, we don’t have any way to help you, since as far as we can tell, you have the item.”

You have got to be ----- kidding me.

“Seriously? I don’t get an item I paid for, and I’m supposed just take this act of retail sodomy with a smile?”

“Well, let’s see here…what item was it again?” he asked as peered of the aforementioned checklist.

“It was the 6-pack of LED lights.”

“Hmmm…oh, wow, that’s a $150 item. There’s no way I can give you a new one. Surely you understand.”

I clenched my fist as tightly as I could, reminding myself that my daughters’ didn’t need the trauma of visiting their father in prison.

“NO. Surely you understand that I want my ----- item all the more since I paid $150 for it. How hard can this be? Do they not train you numb-skulls for situations like this? Surely this isn’t the first time this has happened.”

It was at that point that Paul and the clerk commenced a Mexican standoff with me for a good 3 minutes, where we just stared at each other blankly while a line began to form behind me. (After all, I had been dealing with their bullcrap for a good 10-15 minutes at this point.)

“FINE.” Paul finally said rolling his eyes. “Just go get him a new one,” he instructed the clerk.

“What? Really? I’m supposed to just give it to him after all that?”

“I guess the customer is always right,” Paul said, rolling his eyes even hard this time.

But of course, the way he said it…well, let’s just say he really knew how to put the ‘ass’ in ‘assistant manager’. Even in conceding the battle to me, he was still just askin’ for a whoopin’.

“Actually…” a third employee appeared out of nowhere and chimed in. “You can’t just pull an item out of stock. You’ll have to refund him, and he’ll have to go back and get it himself and purchase it again.”

“Jeez, you guys really are a bunch of a-holes, aren’t you? You’re going to make me do all the foot work after all that, eh?” I was shaking my dang head in disbelief over how absurd this all was. “But it all works out the same in the end, right? I’m getting what I paid for?”

“Yes, indeed,” confirmed the Know-It-All employee.

“Fine, whatevs,” I said as I headed off to the lighting section.

When I had finally hauled the big honkin’ box of lights back to the register, a completely new clerk greeted me.

“Oh, fudge…how am I going to get the military discount without my father-in-law? That’s $15 that I’m not going to let go without a stink, especially after being put on trial by your colleagues.”

“No problem! Do you know his phone number? That’s all I need and I’ll get you taken care of lickety-split…”

And just like that, she disproved the theory that only ass-hats were working the evening shift at Lowe’s that day.

She was actually…helpful? *Gasp* Friendly? *Whaaaat?!?* Solved the customer’s problem with a smile? *No way, Jose!*

Whew! Praise the Jesus. There would be no fist-fights in Lowe’s that day. At least none that would involve me…

The point of the story is “Jesus is always the answer.” Or sometimes violence. Jesus and/or violence. Both answers are generally acceptable.

…

…

…

*stifles laugh*

Just kidding. We all know that it’s the threat of Jesus and/or violence that usually gets the job done. After all, you read the last post before I went on vacation, right?

Right…

Content created on: 30 June / 1 July 2023 (Fri/Sat)