Why oh why do we subject ourselves to this place? Oh yeah, because the local dudes never seem to be open when we need something.
The misery starts early with the parking lot design. It’s always a good idea to put the main incoming and outgoing traffic area right in front of the store where people are walking out with their monster carts of very precious cargo. This is especially true of people coming out of the store since they’re generally tired, angry, and stressing about wallet depletion syndrome. I enjoy dodging traffic, especially with a very distractible (as in as likely as not to plunk his butt down in the middle of the street to examine the very interesting bug going by) kidlet in tow. The only way to make it worse is to put it next to a Sprawl*Mart to increase the potential traffic.
At the entrance, I’m greeted with intimidating towers of goods. The labels on the aisles show only the items on the front of that aisle so I have to walk around the entire perimeter to see find what I’m looking for, in this case a new toilet seat* and a ceiling fan.
This march to the signs leads to my next problem…everyone is doing the gawk walk so there is cart blockage making the rows impassible. Even when I know where something is it takes forever to get there.
Next up on the irritation scale is the overwhelming selection combined with the underwhelming “expert” advice. At least the toilet seat section is pretty self explanatory and I had no problem selecting a basic model but the ceiling fans? The Despot had dozens of them. There was no “expert” anywhere in the vicinity so any selection is based on appearances and do you know what that means? It means I get to go back to return said item after Ben spent hours installing and uninstalling it. Not only that, the installation process included a trip to the Despot to return and replace the remote control unit after it shorted out only to have the new one also short out. And then we decided it was too noisy so even if the remote did work we didn’t want the thing.
Ben went to one of our local overpriced lighting shops, asked them for their quietest fan and brought home a non-descript but very quiet fan. The purchase and installation of this fan took approximately an hour.
Oh, and might I add just one more item to the list of things I hate about the Despot? Self-serve checkouts. Has anyone ever had a smooth transaction with one of these things? I loath the reproachful voice telling me to place my item here or there. I hate that if my credit card stripe can’t be read (note to self, get a new credit card) the whole process aborts.
*Please please explain how we could have broken not one but TWO toilet seats? If one more wood one breaks I’m going to buy one of those uncomfortable plastic ones and that will eliminate Ben’s primary reading room but you know what? I don’t care! Take care of business and get out of there already. But that’s not what this post is about.
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2 comments:
OK, WHO, exactly, has broken two toilet seats? Me thinks Sam is rebelling against his potty training!
I can't wait for Lowe's to open. Never been to one, but it's gotta be better than the despot...
Um, Ben broke it both times but I figured that I probably shouldn't broadcast that but what the hell. Now everyone who bothers to read this knows. Hee!
Sam'll probably break this one.
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