Success Warrior: The Blog That Embraces ADHD

Fire Sale (Part 2)

 
Click HERE to read Fire Sale (Part 1).

So,

I take the dog to the vet and Tia meets us there.  While in the waiting room at the vet, I call Sears to get their delivery information.  The guy that answers the phone doesn't have the information and apparently it's not written down anywhere.  He turns his head from the phone a bit and asks another guy about deliveries but that guy doesn't know either.  He says that he'll call the guy that does know.  Apparently this is a closely guarded secret and there is only one guy at Sears that knows the delivery costs and schedule to Wendover.  He puts me on hold to make the call on another line.  I'm on hold for a while and visit with Tia while we also wait for the dog's turn to see the doc.  Killing two waiting birds with one time stone.  The guy on the phone comes back on the line and says that Double-Oh-Sears isn't answering his phone.  He takes my name and number and says he'll call back when he tracks down the Sears delivery guru. 

The foster dog needs surgery but that's a story for another day.  We run the dog home and make the 120 mile trip on a quest for a new fridge.

We go to Home Depot first.  We are walking toward the fridge section and I realize that I left my phone in the car.  I tell my wife.  "You aren't expecting a call, are you?" she says with a knowing smirk that says if Sears hasn't called in the two hours that it took to take the dog home and drive 120 miles, they probably aren't going to be calling.  Double-Oh-Sears has probably just completed a dangerous delivery mission and is busy having sex with a hottie and is refusing to answer the phone.  Double-Oh-Sears, licensed to drill.

We get to the fridge section and Tia tells the Home Depot sales guy that our fridge just died and we need to buy a new one.  He starts in on this pitch about how we should have been here on Black Friday when everything was on sale, like really, really, really, on sale.  He goes on and on with how absolutely great, terrific, and marvelous this sale was.  "Man, you should have been here!"

There are two problems here.  First, our fridge died today (the body isn't even warm yet).  Second, our crystal ball broke two weeks ago and the crystal ball service gypsy hasn't been out to Wendover to fix it yet (and you do not want to know what her service charge is for house calls to Wendover).

We look around at some fridges.  My wife asks the guy about one of them (Is it in stock? Does it come in white? etc.) and the sales guy answers by telling her that particular fridge was $600 off on Black Friday and we sure missed out on one hell of a sale, boy howdy!  We'll still get 10% off for some pitiful little sale going on right now but it won't amount to anything near the $600 off that it was on Black Friday.  Oh, too bad too, because they had that fridge in stock on Black Friday but now they don't have them in stock.  You really should have been here Friday. 

When can we get one? 

"December 21st."

I could probably build one from scratch in that time.

We check on another one that was in stock and had a super, fantastic, wonderful sale price on Black Friday but is no longer selling at that super cool price and isn't in stock anymore.  He started to rave more about the great Home Depot Black Friday Fridge Sale Of 2010 but I didn't hear much of what he said because I was having a Scrubs moment.  I could picture him setting the DVR Thanksgiving night to record the news channels on Black Friday so that he could come home after his orgasmic day of selling fridges at 40% off and watch for the coverage.  Every year, they show stores opening at the buttcrack of dawn with delirious shoppers operating on too much caffeine and not enough brain cells rushing through the doors, like opening the pens to start the running of the bulls in Pamplona.  He would watch the spectacle and rewatch it.  His Black Friday porn.  Sitting on his mom's couch wearing nothing but his orange apron, a bottle of 10W-40 on the end table, with one hand holding an air gun and the other hand starting to raise the apron to reveal . . .

"We're leaving," Tia said saving me from my own mind.  I'm not sure why she listened to him for so long.  Of the two of us, I'm the patient one and I was ready to go the second time he nyah-nyahed us for missing Black Friday.  If she would have allowed him to prattle on much longer, he would have needed a ShamWow and a cigarette.

I checked my phone in the car to see if I had missed the call from Sears.  Nope.

We drove across the street to Liddiard Home Furnishing.  It's a furniture store so it's a completely different setting from the warehouse motif Home Depot has going on.  Christmas lights on the outside, Christmas music playing, a fountain in the middle of the store, carpet on the floor, and the sales guy (Don) met us as we walked in the door.  Not that this is any kind of knock on Home Depot because they serve different purposes but I point it out here because it was such a completely different mood for us than the last several hours had been.  We told Don we were looking for the fridge section and he escorted us that way.

My wife was right up front in telling Don what we wanted while we walked through the store.  She let him know that it had been kind of a stressful afternoon, that our fridge had died, that we had just driven 120 miles on the vague hope of finding a solution, that we realized that Black Friday had wiped out everyone's inventory (fridges for Christmas?), and that we had been treated with a complete lack of compassion by the Black Friday Freak at Home Depot.  She asked him for a bit of patience and any help he thought he might be able to provide.

We checked out the fridges, every single one of them.  Don kept in the area but out of the way, ready to jump in to answer any questions that we had.  This went on for a bit until we had it narrowed down to two fridges.  Don said that he was going to check to see if they were in stock.  If one of them was, the decision would be made for us.  He came back and said that neither of them was in stock.  Natch.  He said he was going to go call the manager to see how quickly they could get one and have it delivered out to Wendover.

Tia called Sears to see if they had cracked the vault yet, the one that held all their delivery information that took two employees with separate keys to open by turning the keys in the locks simultaneously while staring into retinal scanners.  The guy that answered the phone asked if she, by chance, had ever heard of me.  Why yes, he's my husband.  They had tracked down Double-Oh-Sears and found out that the delivery cost was $200 and that they make Wendover deliveries once a month except in December, when they make absolutely no Wendover deliveries.  "Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal!"  The guy was probably too embarrassed to call me back with that bit of news.

I asked Don how much delivery to Wendover would be.  He looked it up.  It was on a piece of paper.  That he had with him.  On his clipboard.  In his hands.  Really?  It's that easy.  You're allowed to write these things down and give them out to employees.  No secret agents, vaults, keys, or retinal scanners needed?  Golly!

$169.  $31 cheaper than the Sears We-Said-We-Deliver-But-We-Were-Dickin'-With-You delivery service but $169 more expensive than the Home Depot Drop-Your-Shit-In-The-Driveway-Just-In-Time-For-Christmas-Too-Bad-You-Missed-Black-Friday delivery service.

Tia told me that she didn't care which of the two fridges we got and wandered off to check out dishwashers.  Our dishwasher is on its last leg.  One of the settings doesn't work anymore and every once in a while the dishwasher makes this harsh sound like it's trying to puke all the dishes back out.  It's like that old 2 packs a day guy.  The one that starts hacking to the point where you expect to see some black phlegm shoot out of his mouth, if not an entire lung.  Any day now, the dishwasher is going to start making that noise and start spewing plates out of its door, if not the entire motor.  We've been talking about replacing it for months but keep hoping that it will just keep limping along. 

Meanwhile I was wandering back and forth between two nearly identical fridges trying to figure out why there was a $200 difference in price.  One did have an extra button on the ice machine (to lock it - someone will have to explain why anyone would lock their ice - maybe the people at Sears keep their delivery information in the ice bin) and it also had an extra light to show when it was time to change the water filter.  $100 for a button and $100 for a light.  I just couldn't make that work in my head so I chose the less expensive model.

Don came back and gave us the news from the manager.  They would box up the floor model of either fridge we picked and have it delivered to our house (all the way into our house while taking away the carcass of our dead fridge) the very next day.

Sold!

I told him the fridge we wanted and he went off to make the arrangements.  I wandered over to the dishwashers with Tia and looked them over.  I'm not going to go into the whole story here because this is already a novella but 2010 hasn't been our year.  I told her that we should just pick up the dishwasher today so that we didn't have to deal with it when the old one died.  Not that there would be a rush like there is with a fridge but I am hoping 2011 will be a smoother year and this is one predictable problem that can be avoided.

Don came back and we chatted about dishwashers.  We asked about the features on about 3 of them and he answered all our questions.  We picked one and then Don asked me if I had ever installed one.  Nope.  So, he took me over to one of the machines and pulled it out of the cabinet, flipped it over, and showed me everything about putting the thing together.  Three connections, basically.  I think even I can handle that.  I should point out that at this point, the store was closed and Don was not trying to rush us out the door.  He was still in patient, helping mode.  I asked him if delivery would cost anything since we were already having the fridge delivered.  Nope.  It'll ride shotgun with fridge for free.

Sold again.

Throw it on the truck Don and I'll make sure that your boss knows that you came through for us when we needed it (and that you made an extra sale on top of that).  I didn't actually say that out loud but I am going to follow through with what the voices in my head were saying.  Sometimes the voices don't sound crazy.  Sometimes.

The next day at about 4pm, the guys on the delivery truck called but my phone never rang.  They left a message saying they were on the road and about an hour out.  They called back 30 minutes later and this time my phone did ring.  They told me they were 30 minutes out.

30 minutes later, they were at the curb bringing new appliances in and taking old appliances out.  We unboxed everything and they put all the cardboard in their truck.  They double checked that we had everything we needed to install the dishwasher and then rode off into the sunset (which is even more magical when you consider they were driving east).

See?  There are Fridge Fairies after all.

Next year, we will probably be redoing the floors in our kitchen, dining room, living room, and two hallways.  When that time comes, Home Depot will not be the first stop.  We'd probably end up getting there 5 days after the stupendous, once in a lifetime, Home Depot Memorial Day Flooring Sale and have our faces relentlessly rubbed in it.

Now, I'm back at the computer working on a blog post, tons of thoughts in my head, with the smell of new fridge in the air.

Fire Sale (Part 1)

 
So,

I'm sitting at my desk working on yesterday's blog post, tons of thoughts running through my head, when I think I smell something burning <insert jokes here connecting me thinking and the smell of something burning>. 

It's electrical.  There are wires burning in my house.  I exit the office and start my recon mission.  As I head for the living room, the smell gets stronger and I know that something is burning.  There's a really nasty feeling that goes along with that knowledge.  I head for the kitchen and my nose tells me that I have hit paydirt.  Something in my kitchen is burning.

I keep a fire extinguisher in my kitchen for just this occasion.  Except . . .

Except, I can't see or hear anything on fire.  I start looking at appliances.  The oven clock is still on.  The microwave timer is still lit.  The fridge is still running.  The freezer is humming along nicely.  I look up at the lights, even though none of them were on at the time (this defying common sense will become a uniting thread through this ordeal), and nothing looks unusual there.

I take it to the next level and start feeling all the light switches and outlets, checking for anything warmer than it should be.  Nothing.

I walk around the house again, going out in the garage where the breaker box is but it's nice fresh air out there.  I come back in following my nose and I'm positive that the problem is in the kitchen.  I double check everything again and still can't figure it out.  It's time to call the experts.

I call the fire chief and let him know what's going on and he says he'll send a couple of guys over to check it out.  I call my wife to let her know that something is burning in the house and that I have called the fire department.  It's always best that people that listen to police radios hear about these things on the phone before it goes out over the radio, thereby reducing the freak level when they hear that the fire department is heading to their house. 

Then I wait, watching out the front window for the fire department.  I walk back and check the kitchen.  Back to the living room.  Watch out the window for a bit.  Back to the kitchen.  Back to the living room.

Nothing seems to be happening at either place so I do the next obvious thing.  I tweet that my house is on fire.

What?  Isn't that what everybody does?

My wife arrives.  Mind you, her office is barely within the city limits of the other Wendover so she has travelled at least twice as far as the fire department and arrived first.  Now, to be fair, the fire guys were on lunch and I had made it sound like it was no big deal.  Add to that the fact that it's her house and you get arrival times that matched the motivation levels.  She checks out the kitchen, doesn't find anything, and we make plans for a friend to pick Trey up from school since he'll be out in 30 minutes and we'll probably be a bit busy.

The fire guys show up and both of them have thermal imaging units in their hands as they approach.  I open the door and they both say something to the effect of, "Man!  Something is burning in here."  Then they go to work with the cameras, scanning pretty much everything as they walk to the kitchen.  They scan the entire kitchen and find nothing so they start checking the rest of the house.  They check the breaker box and the crawl space under the house where the furnace is.  Everything seems fine and they come back to the kitchen because they also believe that's where the source is.  They start touching everything, outlets, light switches, and power cords, trying to see if they sense anything at all even though the cameras would have picked it up.  There is absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind that something electrical is/was burning in that kitchen and there should be some sign of that.  So even though the cameras would have found it, they checked by touch.  Then they went back to cameras.  Then they checked the whole house again.  Then they checked the kitchen.

Then, they gave up.

They suggested that we call an electrician to see if he might have some idea of what was going on.  They asked if we would be home tonight. 

Shah!  As if.  Regardless of what our plans were before, we're going to be sticking around waiting to see if anything actually ignites.  They tell us to call back if anything changes for the worse or if we find the answer so that they can add that to their experience toolbox.

We call an electrician, who happens to be on lunch break two doors away from us.  I see him pull up and I open the door so he can just walk in as my wife and I are trying to plan out the rest of the evening, which will include a trip to the vet.

The electrician walks in and says, "I could smell it before I even got to the house."  He goes to work and does a few things that none of the rest of us have done.  He pulls the oven away from the wall.  Nothing.  He takes the panel off the breaker box and checks that all of the wires are connected correctly and that none of them are hot.  Check.  He goes into the crawl space in the ceiling (I didn't even know I had a crawl space in the ceiling).  No smoke and no burnt wire smell.  He comes back to the kitchen for another look around and checks behind the fridge.  Nothing.  He's stumped as well.  He has another call he has to go on but says that he'll check back after that call to see if anything has changed.

He leaves.  Tia and I have another meeting.  She's going to go get Trey and bring him back while I maintain the fire watch.  Then she'll go back to work and call some of her fire fighter friends on the Utah side and see if they have any ideas.  The one she calls tells her to try the electric company.  She calls the electric company and for some reason (that I now forget), they can't send anyone to check on the house.  She calls her friend back for Plan B.  He suggests she call the Utah fire chief just to see if a fresh set of eyes will help and she does.  Sometimes it seems ridiculous that there are two of every government agency out here where the combined population of the cities is about 6,000.  We have two police departments, two high schools, and two fire departments.  In this case, it works to our advantage.  She calls me and lets me know that he's on the way and within minutes, he's here with another guy.

They do the whole routine again.  Checked the walls with a heat sensor, touched everything, looked in the breaker box, checked the furnace, checked behind the stove, turned the oven on to see if works (something new but doesn't prove helpful), and checked the air conditioner.  The air conditioner obviously wasn't running since it's 30 degrees outside but they were as certain as everyone else that something electrical had burned and were checking on the nearly impossible chance that something in the air conditioner had burned and then been pulled into the heating system (it's central air) and vented into the house.  No luck on that.

They ended the same way all the rest of us had.  Standing in a corner of the kitchen in a triangle area where the corners of the triangle were the stove, microwave, and fridge.  There is a toaster inside that triangle and trust me when I say that all the firefighters, the electrician, and I checked the toaster and the power cable a couple of times each.  It's not the toaster.

They stood in the Bermuda triangle where strange acrid smells of burning wire emanated for apparently no reason.  We all stood there hoping for the collective conscious of the Universe to gather over our heads and give us an idea.  No luck.  They said to call the Nevada fire department immediately if anything changed and were happy that I had been so quick the first time.  Uh, yeah, it's my house.  On fire.  But I guess some people don't connect the two for some reason. 

"Burning house!  Burning house!  I know I'm supposed to do something but I can't for the life of me remember what it is.  Oh yeah, update my Facebook status!"  (Remember, I called the fire department first then let the stupidity enter the scene.)

They are heading out the door when the guy with the fire chief asks me if anyone has checked the fridge.  The collective conscious of the Universe has arrived in this firefighter's head.  I tell him that the electrician looked behind it.  He asks if anyone has actually checked the fridge itself.  Nope.

"I'm just thinking," he says to the fire chief, "that the compressor may have burned out."

We form a Conga line and head back for the Bermuda triangle.  He holds his hand at the bottom of the fridge where the air vents.

"Yep, compressor's blown."

We pull the fridge even farther out and besides finding a couple of tennis balls (wtf?), there appears to be a small burn mark in the floor. 

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Update: I found out today when I cleaned that it was not a burn mark and was just a stain on the floor but we had still found the problem.

The good news is that we found the answer.  The other good news is that the compressor is done burning and the house is not in any danger.  The bad news is that we have to get a new fridge.  The cold inside the fridge is being maintained solely by the insulation in the fridge and it won't last through the night.  The even otherer good news is that we have two tennis balls(?). 

I call Tia and let her know that we're safe but we'll be flying into town after the vet appointment to see how quickly a fridge can be delivered to our house.  I call the Nevada fire chief and let him know what we found so the mystery is solved for them as well.  The electrician shows up, as promised, as the firefighters are walking out the door and they give him the answer to the mystery.  I call the closest Home Depot for an example of what kind of delivery charge and times we might be looking at.  They have free shipping and it's usually within about 48 hours.  The guy does warn me that free shipping means that the guy driving the delivery truck opens the rolling door, backs up really fast, stops hard, and the fridge slides out of the truck into my driveway and it's up to me to get it the rest of the way into the house.  Okay, the driver actually uses a forklift but he does leave it in the driveway unless my doors and hallways are big enough to drive a forklift in. 

My wife later asks me what happens to the old fridge. 

I dunno. 

Fridge Fairy?

To be continued . . .

Read Part 2

Customer Service: Quilter's Haven

I meant to write about this about 2 months ago but had misplaced the paper that I had written the store name on.  I just found it so I can finally do the post.

We went into town on the 24th of July to spend the day with my brothers.  We did some shopping, had a barbeque, and went to a baseball game.  It was a great day.

We started the day by stopping at Quilter's Haven in Bountiful Utah.  I can't tell you why we went to Quilter's Haven because it has something to do with a Christmas present for someone who might be reading this blog.  The reason isn't important for the story.

The sign said they were closed but I saw someone go in when we were pulling into the parking lot so I figured someone had forgotten to flip the sign.  We went in and, as it turns out, they were closed.  The person that went in was the owner and had gone in to vacuum and clean the place up.

We apologized and were going to leave but she said that since we were there and she was there, we might as well get what we need.  We thanked her because we had driven 120 miles and wouldn't be back for quite some time. 

She didn't rush us in the least.  She helped us just like the store was open and we weren't putting her out.  She showed different materials and designs and let us browse.  Someone else came in while we were there and she helped that customer as well.

We live so far away that it's really nice when people help us out.  Some places don't and some do.  We remember both kinds.  The people that help us get our repeat business and some good press on my blog.  The people that don't help us lose a customer and also get mentioned on this blog.

Quilter's Haven has classes on how to make quilts.  My wife wants to learn how to make quilts and has said that if we end up living anywhere near the store, that's where she's going to learn.

Customer service is so important.  It's amazing that it gets cut or isn't encouraged more.

Customer Service and Gas Mileage

This is part four of the car purchase posts.  If you need to catch up, here is part 1, part 2, part 3, and a side trip about that day and the funniest part of the car purchase.

My parents and all of my siblings have bought cars from Saturn of Riverdale.  I don't know how many cars we have bought but it's probably close to 10 by now and it will likely be more.

This is obviously good for the Saturn dealership.  That's a bunch of cars that they don't have to advertise to sell.  Saturn was our first stop when we went looking for a car.

There are a couple of ways to look at this from Saturn's viewpoint.  They could quit trying because they have some fairly loyal customers.  Maybe we'll all just keep on coming.  Some companies take this route.  They work hard to get customers, to gain trust and loyalty, and then they move on to the next customer.  Loyal customers are expected to keep on returning based solely on the loyalty and the fact the business did a good job for a while.

To me, it seems like there would be more pressure on Saturn to make sure my family has a great experience.