How NOT to Start Your Monday Morning

How NOT to start your Monday: Head out the back door intending to go to the garage fridge to grab a diet coke (I don’t do coffee). Just as you reach for the door handle your left foot lands in something soft and squishy. Pick it up instantly and say, “Oh yuck,” and put your right foot down which also lands in something bigger that’s soft and squishy. Say, “Oh, shit,” in a louder voice and before you place your left foot back on the floor you look to see what you’ve gotten into.

Hairballs and all that go with them!!

And there, out on the back step, looking lovingly up at you is Senior Citizen Simon, depositor of said hairballs on the rug inside the back door. He must have puked, decided to vacate the premises so he wouldn’t be blamed, run downstairs through all the flippy cat doors and outside. Why complete your job OUTside when you can do it INside!! Oh well, a good shake and another load of laundry will make everything right – right?

Ole, Lovely Daughter and Lars are all having a hard time wiggling this morning. I don’t know about Dick, Ted or Scott as I didn’t witness their attempts to wiggle (ugly word picture, huh?) All this after a marathon-roofing project this weekend. All the shingles are replaced on the house, one side of the garage is stripped and tarpapered, and the other side has yet to be done. And of course the forecast is for rain off and on for the entire week. As cool a spring as we’ve had so far, wouldn’t you know that this weekend, the weekend Ole chose to do the shingling was the hottest so far this year. It was in the mid 80s with high humidity. I couldn’t keep enough cold water on hand to keep these guys going as they were sweating it out faster than they could consume.

I will be so glad when the job is done and the mess is cleaned up. Then we’ve got to go over the yard and driveway with a BIG magnet that Dick has to pick up all the staples and nails to avoid any flat tires.

I played gopher for this project. You know – go fer this and go fer that? But that’s okay. I’d rather do that than be up on the roof. Somebody had to be on the ground goferring to the fridge and throwing water bottles up on the roof. I even hit Scott in the head once – sorry Scott. But at least I got it up on the roof, right?

Anyway, one of the things I had to do was run to town for forgotten parts, or things they didn’t know they were going to need. One of these things was a 3-inch roof vent cap. After Ole explained to me what it was used for, I knew pretty much what I was looking for. You can’t be married to Ole for 41 years and not know about construction stuff. Anyway, just to make sure the Big Construction Supply Store had it in stock (duh), Scott called the store to verify. He got the name of the young man he talked to in Building Supplies (Brian) who knew that I would be coming within 15 minutes to pick this piece up. Now this is a new Big Construction Supply Store (from here on known as BCSS) that has just opened up close to us, a subsidiary of another one just across the river in the sister city. The interior of the store covers about 7 acres (so they advertise) and it’s only been open about 3 months, so I’ll give the sales clerks some slack that they may not know all their inventory yet.

So I trot into the store and head for the building supply department and ask for Brian.

“Who?”
“Brian.”
“There’s no Brian here. Oh, yeah, he went on break. Can I help you?”
“Okay. I need a 3” roof vent cap.”
“A what?”
“A 3” roof vent cap.”
“Oh, that’s not in this department. That’s over in plumbing. I’ll take you over there.”

So I follow young clerk 1, (that you could tell was really green) over to the plumbing department where he looks and looks and looks and doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what he’s looking for.

“Just a minute, Lady, I’m going to find the guy in charge of this department.”
“Okay.”

I can see young sales clerk wandering up and down various aisles looking for a coworker but not finding one. Finally sales clerk 2 walks by and I snag him, tell him what I’m looking for and he says, “They’re not in this department, they’re over in heating. I’ll take you over there.”

First of all, the building supply department is in one corner of the store. The plumbing department was in the opposite corner of the store, and now we’re going to the heating department, which is in a third corner of the store. All of this in a store that covers 7 acres, and I’ve got a knee that is flaring up saying “Don’t be doin’ this stuff – don’t be walkin’ this far on all this concrete flooring.”

We got to the heating department where clerk 3 and clerk 4 were standing around bullshitting, leaning up against the shelves. Clerk 2 tells them what I’m looking for and clerk 3 pulls one off the shelf and dumps it into my cart. BUT – I knew that wasn’t what I was looking for. What I wanted had nothing to do with heating; it had to do with venting your sewer stack off the roof. I told him politely that wasn’t what I needed, and explained to him what I did need.

“Oh, that’s over in plumbing.” (which is 18 miles away over in the other corner of the store.)

By this time, I’m losing my cool and my knee is screaming at me saying, “We’re bone on bone here – don’t do this.”

But I headed out across the tundra, following clerks 1, 2, 3 and 4, none of whom knew their backside from a hole in the ground, when I just couldn’t help myself and said, “You know, Guys, I’ve been across this store three times and I still don’t have what I need,” when clerk 3 turns to me, puts his hands on his hips and sarcastically says, “Well, Sooorrrryy – but we have SO MANY different kinds of stacks that unless you explain yourself thoroughly we have no way of knowing just what it is you want.” Clerk 3 was an arrogant little shit about 22 years old named Billy who thought his you-know-what didn’t stink. And I was about to tell him so when I thought better of it and just decided to get the piece I needed and get the hell out of Dodge.

Now it was obvious that Billy was in charge of teaching the newbies, clerks 1, 2 and 4, the ropes. What he was teaching them was how to destroy customer relations and send them somewhere else.

For all you Billies out there, what your teaching the newbies, and what they will eventually find out is, “I am the customer. I am the reason you have this job. You treat me badly and I will go away. And if I go away you will eventually not have a job.”

BCSS’s first faux paux was when they were supposed to deliver the shingles to the roof on Thursday between 1:00 and 4:00 p.m. Dick even took time off from work to come out and help Ole offload the shingles from the crane device that they use to get them to the roof. This was just over a $4000 order – not exactly what I would call chicken feed. So here sat Dick and Ole waiting for the shingles. Four o’clock came – no shingles. Five o’clock – no shingles. Finally Ole called the delivery desk and the young man claimed they hadn’t set a time for delivery. Only that they would be delivered on Thursday SOMETIME. Funny thing – Ole had it written on the paperwork (a photocopy of the young man’s handwriting) they were scheduled for 1-4 p.m. on Thursday Then it started to rain and after many phone calls back and forth between the delivery desk, the truck driver who was supposed to deliver the shingles and Ole, the truck driver called at 6:30 p.m. and said he wasn’t going to deliver shingles in the rain. What? What’s the difference – shingles are going to get wet eventually when they’re on your roof anyway. And it wasn’t doing more than just sprinkling.

Back to the delivery desk:
“Okay, when can you deliver the shingles? Tomorrow morning?” (Meaning Friday morning.)
“No, our schedule is all booked for Friday. MAYBE after everyone else is delivered we could run them out – say – after 6:00 p.m.”
“Uh – no – I think you better put us ahead of your scheduled deliveries for Friday.”
“We can’t do that sir. I can send them out after 6 only if the driver is willing to work overtime. Otherwise it will be next week sometime.”

And Ole didn’t explode here – good thing I wasn’t on the phone. Ole just gritted his teeth and said thank you. I’ll call you back when I decide what I want done. Ole went into BCSS on Friday morning and after much negotiating and discussing the issue with the manager he got them delivered Friday afternoon – only about 28 hours after they were SUPPOSED to be here. Ole’s aim was to start shingling on Friday morning instead of Saturday morning. If that had actually happened we could have been done with the project by Sunday evening instead of still having the garage left with rain in the forecast for everyday this week.


BCSS, as I said, has only been open in this location a few months, but Ole and I have had three major episodes of poor or nonexistent customer service in dealing with them already. Lovely Daughter and Lars have had several also. So once this roofing job is over with I doubt that they will get anymore of our business. We’ll go back to their sister store across the river even though it is farther away, where we can be treated like people, not a pain in the neck, and when they say they’re going to deliver, they deliver.

I’ve been making notes and will write the manager of the new store a letter stating situations, dates, and names. Will anything come of it? I doubt it, but at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that I said something. After all, it’s management that allows this kind of behavior – shit rolls downhill, you know.

As I get older I get bitchier and refuse to take the shit that a lot of people dish out.

Customer service is virtually nonexistent anymore – and that’s a sad thing.