Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

In which I am the customer from hell

Today was not a good day. That Thing at Work I keep referring to, I thought it was done. Turns out, thanks to some shifting bureaucracy, I may need to re-do a considerable portion, and I should have started about three weeks ago.

But really, that's just background noise. I need to replace my patio door. I should have done it awhile ago, but it isn't cheap, so I left it until it's really broken. Now I realize I have a pet sitter coming in three weeks who's going to need to use that door.

I went to Lowes to get a new one (because Home Depot pissed me off for the last time with the dishwasher). The first step was having the door measured, and it was frustrating me that step two...buying the door...was being delayed because somehow the measurements weren't getting from the guy who took them to the store. So I made a giant pain in the ass of myself and called them thirty times (well, three) until the store called and got the measurements from the guy.

So today after I got off my volunteer job, I went to order the door. And I just realized that typing the whole thing is going to be really tedious, and the story isn't funny. Basically I wasted an hour of my life with the window guy, who managed to do some things very nicely and some things poorly, two clerks who didn't do anything well and never made eye contact, and a manager who did a fair but unsuccessful job trying to appease me after I tore the contract in half and told them I no longer trusted them to competently fill a hole in the side of my house.

I made a scene, and I feel really lousy about it. The only part of the story that doesn't suck is that I did tear the contract in half when I reached the breaking point. The was a time when I'd have fumed, stood in line for twelve hours, let the clerks act like it was my fault that their computer records were wrong, and still given them $900, then cried in the car.

At least I didn't give them $900. I just wish I'd handled it with more aplomb.