Yesterday

I was up early, cleaning my house, getting all into those boxes o' crap that have been sitting in my computer room since I moved her almost four years ago. Or is it five? God, I'm getting old.

Anyway, the reason for my mad cleaning is that my book club is coming over on Thursday night. Last time it was my turn to host, we went to a wine bar in town and I paid. Remember my CHAOS problem? Well, I was not able to tidy up in time, but it was expensive, so yeah, it's at my place.

I'm going to barbecue, and wanted to replace the crappy, $4.99 plastic chairs I've had for several years.They're stained and rickety.

You would think that buying patio chairs, at this time of year, wouldn't be so hard. But no. Not so easy. Oh, easy I suppose if you are willing to spend 50 bucks apiece on the chairs, but I wasn't. There had to be something in the middle.

I found them at Target a couple of weeks ago. Mesh, sturdy, and $19.99 each. I could do that. But, of course, I was with a friend, and Target is 35 miles away, and there was no room in the car for the chairs.

So the search here continued. Everywhere, the chairs were either out of stock, or the same type of chair was crazy expensive. Finally, on Monday, at Home Depot, there they were. Four of 'em, stacked together, beige and comfortable looking.

With no price tag.

Have any of you tried to get help at Home Depot? Then you can guess what happened next.

No price on any of the chairs, nor a barcode, nor a sign anywhere near them indicating the price. I picked up the four chairs and walked over to customer service. There I waited in line for ten minutes while a customer was being helped. There were three to four employees behind the counter at all times, but only one was helping customers. As I was fourth in line, I decided to just go to the checkout stand and hope they could figure out the price there.

There was only one cashier open, plus two self-checkout lines. There were at least four people in each line.

The cashier however was having trouble with his register, and it wouldn’t work properly. A second employee came over to help him, but I spent another 10 minutes in line waiting for him to get his register working. Of course, opening a new register didn't occur to anyone.

I get to the cashier finally, and he couldn’t help me and sent me to one of the employees manning the self-checkout station. That employee couldn’t help me and a third was asked to help me. This third employee and I walked back over to the patio display area and confirmed that yes, there was no sign anywhere indicating a price. Then walked back over with me to the register to try and find it listed on the computer. It wasn’t there.

This took another ten minutes. Up to this point, all the clerks were trying to be helpful, and were polite to me, but had no idea what to do. No manager was called. I was being all sugary and sweet, but inside was wondering what the hell was going on. One of the guys paged someone (three times!) from the gardening section, but no one responded.

I was then sent back to customer service, who had no idea what to do, and who finally found someone from the garden department to help me.

This cool cat, named Ken, and I once again (my third time) went back to the patio furniture area to confirm that once again, no, there was no price anywhere for these items. I guess this is because my word and the other clerk's word weren't good enough. He said finally, “Well, we would have to call a manager to figure out what to do.”

And I'm thinking, "You think?"

Yet he didn't call a manager. He told me to go home, see if I could find the chair online, print out a picture and bring it back with a SKU number (I live about 15 miles away, no biggie, but come on). I did ask him at that point if Home Depot had a computer on which that information could be looked up. Ken said, “Yeah, we could look it up,” but again, didn’t.

I was so pissed, but didn't let on. At that point, 45 minutes of my life was gone, and I didn't want to waste any more time with this dork.

After thinking about it yesterday though, I called and asked to speak to the manager. Within five minutes, he had sold me the next chair up (a $45 chair mind you!) for $20 each. Totally cool and charming. Apologetic for my wasted time the day before.

Picked up the chairs, was on my way home, going up the hill to my house, when a bunch of Quail ran across the street right in front of my car. Thankfully, they just made it past me.

Except for one straggler. I saw it only a second before a cloud of feathers went up in the air. Couldn't even feel that I hit it, but looked back and...

All I can say is I'm sure it was instantaneous. Oh the guilt.

I just hope it wasn't one of those babies I saved a couple weeks ago.