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.
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*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)
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