And The Beat Goes On...

I dislike battling out service issues with large corporations.  While whatever grievance I have may get addressed, at the end of the day nothing will be solved.  Large companies, especially those that sell appliances or any other 'big ticket' item rarely own the entire customer experience.  You buy from the Big Box store, but the delivery team and warehouse will more than likely be contract players that aren't officially tied back to the Big Box.  They have no skin in the game, so to speak, therefore they have no real incentive to not beat the living piss out of your floors when making a delivery.  It's not as if the Big Box store is going to fire them.  Yes, they will issue forth sincere apologies for the inconvenience and cut a check or gift card for damages, but nothing will be changed for the better. 

Online shopping has definitely taken a big bite out of the retail pie, but brick and mortar retail do themselves no favors by not owning the customer experience from start to finish.  Contracting out delivery may save a couple of nickels, but the dollars going up in flames when consumers decide to shop elsewhere next time add up.  Big Box retailers, should they wish to remain in business, would be wise to adapt the following:

1.  Own the transaction from start to finish.  No more farming out the work to low-bid shops.  Nothing good comes from that.

2.  Hire and train your staff to know your products.  Tape measures are not detonators.  If your sales staff can't answer simple measurement questions then they shouldn't be selling appliances.

3.  Retain and promote individuals that actually care about the job they are doing.  The floor manager at the last Big Box store we were at was a one man wrecking crew.  Whatever he is being paid isn't enough.

4.  Follow up when you say you will follow up.  A simple phone call solves many, many problems and alleviates negative perceptions if person calling is sincere in wanting to help...even when they can't.

And that's all I have to say about that!
 
So, the Oscars were on last night.  I didn't watch most of it as I cannot stand the self-importance of the entire affair.  Actors are dullards, for the most part.  They read other people's words aloud, and they can't even get that right...otherwise there wouldn't be directors.  The work of an actor is neither brave nor harrowing, it's role playing.  Why they behave as if their job is the single hardest job in the world is beyond me...and why we have a night set aside each year to kiss their asses as they contort to congratulate themselves is a mystery as well. 

Seth McFarlane wasn't a bad host, but he held back.  Why he didn't tear the entire premise of the Oscars apart limb from limb is beyond me.  His restraint was obvious, which is why so many jokes and gags fell flat.  If there ever was an awards show that needed to be skinned, flayed, and tossed into the flames it would be the Oscars.  That's what makes Jennifer Lawrence awesome.  Yeah, she's happy she won, but she's sees award season for the overwrought dipsh*ttery it is.  Here's hoping she stays grounded and doesn't fall into the same trap that seems to have swallowed Lindsay Lohan whole....

99 Bottles Of Beer...

During the Great Appliance Debacle of 2013, many things around the house became askew.  The garage suffered a tremendous amount of disorganization as we attempted to make room for appliances we were getting rid of, appliances we received in error, and appliances that never even showed up.  (Thanks again, Sears!)  As I shuffled things around the garage I had to make use of various items, such as a cooler to empty out the freezer before the refrigerator could be moved.  The biggest cooler we have was still filled with bottles of Corona from the disasterpiece of a b-day get together I had.  Those had to be taken out and because I never knew when Sears was showing up with stuff different from the stuff we had purchased, I just kind of put the bottles of Corona on the garage floor.  This planned worked well...until yesterday.

There's a long convoluted story about me trying to repair the passenger side mirror of the Black Mamba up to what happened when I tried to clean the garage, but that's a story for another time. Just know that I'm still driving with only one working side mirror on my bucket due to my super genius move of clipping the frame of the garage door a while back.  A job that looked so easy on the instructions I received with the replacement mirror was confounding, to say the least.  Every single bolt and screw on the Black Mamba are of different sizes, even if they serve the same purpose.  When I went to remove the door panel I discovered I needed special door panel removal tools that I do not own.  Much cursing took place as I struggled to remove the door panel...so much cursing that if F-bombs were fire bombs my garage would have been Dresden.  Anyhoo, I never removed the door panel, but I left a mess in the garage...my ego and self-worth as a half-assed wrencher still lie crumpled in the corner near the LED candy cane lights...

When the girls and I returned home from their gymnastics class yesterday evening, I attempted a quick clean up of the garage.  During said clean up attempt I managed to knock over a Corona bottle, as I reached to stop it from toppling over I tipped another bottle over..next thing you know three bottles of Corona exploded in the garage.  Now, a 16 ounce bottle of beer doesn't look like much until it detonates and showers everything in a three yard radius with barley pop...three don't even seem that daunting until a river of middling Mexican beer is flowing like a mini Rio Grande snaking across the garage floor.  However, the reality is that three bottles of beer contain quite a bit of liquid...and glass...

I did my best with the glass, but I was mostly concerned with the beer.  I opened the garage doors, doused the floor with several 5 gallon buckets of water, and swept the place clean.  This morning the garage still smelled like a bar rag though, and it probably will for eternity.  Stale beer is just an odor that never really goes away and is a distance third only to cat wizz and bong water, in that order, when it comes to smelling offensive.  Come summertime the garage is going to stink like a wino that stumbled upon a cache of Foster's oil cans and a family sized bag of Chili Cheese Fritos.  Not good.  I suppose I could take some Purex or something and swab the place out again...or maybe we'll just move.

Moral of the story- never clean the garage after being disappointed by a big box appliance retailer.  Nothing good comes of it.  

You Want Outlet Prices....?

You say you want to save a few bucks on appliances, so you visit a scratch and dent store...like the Sears Outlet or something.  Sure enough, they have all kinds of appliances from refrigerators to dishwashers to LCD televisions, and all of them are deeply discounted due to the following:

- They are aesthetically challenged, meaning they are as the name implies..scratched and dented, some profoundly, some superficially, but they are flawed appearance wise

- The item is simply overstocked at retail locations and they have to move them, profit margins be damned!

- The item is a return, meaning someone else didn't like it...congrats, you just bought a fridge at a glorified garage sale!


The Better Half And I attempted to buy a new refrigerator at the Sears Outlet, and so far it has been a most unpleasant experience.  Apparently, outlet prices come with outlet service...not so much from the sales staff (the manager at the Tukwila location is a miracle worker, Sears is not paying him enough to keep that place from imploding), but from the delivery side of the equation.

Our refrigerator was supposed to be delivered on 2/14, along with our ding and dent dishwasher. I took that day as a work from home day so I could keep an eye on the delivery guys as they carried stuff in and out.  Around the time the fridge was supposed to arrive, I received a call from the delivery team stating they couldn't find the fridge...because refrigerators are so mobile and all that, it probably scurried away.  They asked to reschedule for Saturday, but the dishwasher was on the way, so I didn't burn a WFH day for absolutely nothing.

We spent Saturday patiently waiting for the fridge.  When it arrived the delivery team was surly and out of sorts.  There were more issues locating the oh so elusive fridge, but they finally wrangled it onto the truck.  Here's where the real fun begins.  Since I had no real idea what time they were arriving, I didn't empty our existing fridge.  The delivery team was all pissy about having to wait for me to remove bags of frozen vegetables, freezer burned peas, and condiments from the fridge.  They became even more agitated when I asked for them to not bring the new fridge in until I cleaned the space where the old one had been, something that took me about 5 minutes to do....

I gave them the all clear signal and they brought the new fridge in...and it was gargantuan.  We looked at and were sold a counter depth fridge, had it measured by the sales staff and confirmed it was counter depth, it was stickered as counter depth, and our fargin receipt said it was counter depth.  What we received was a 31 cubic foot fridge, one about the same size as a fridge/freezer you'd see at your local morgue.  All of this explains why the fridge was so hard to locate...the delivery team was looking for a counter depth appliance, which they could not find.  So I guess they grabbed the nearest one to the door and hoped we wouldn't notice. 

The delivery team refused my refusal to accept delivery of the new fridge and set about hooking it up...even as I objected.  When I told them to haul the thing out, they said they couldn't because they were out of time (must be a union shop) and had to move on, leaving me with a fridge I could stuff the bodies of at least two decent sized hobos into...should I be so inclined.   Luckily, we had a guest over when the delivery team pulled their stunt or I would have gone into a full-blown berserker rage on them...we're talking the Hulk crossed with Wolverine with maybe a little Mr. Hyde thrown in for good measure.  There would have been carnage had I not kept my wits about me as I didn't want to terrify our guest.

At the moment, I still have a Battlestar Galactica sized fridge sitting in the kitchen and our old one wondering what it did to be relegated to the garage.  The Sears delivery team is supposed to be over sometime tomorrow to haul Gigantor back to whatever netherworld it sprung forth from.  While they are here we are also going to discuss the lovely gouges in the floor the last team left as a reminder of that debacle.

What have we learned from this episode?  Sometimes, it isn't worth saving a buck or two shopping at an outlet store for big ticket items.  Maybe springing a few extra bucks is the price you pay if you want the items you paid for actually delivered.  We are taking a break from fridge shopping, but when back in the hunt we'll be going to Lowe's or Home Depot...    

Bash & Pop

Remember back several weeks ago when I posted that every appliance in the house decided to become self-aware and began waging a war of inconvenience against me?  Well, the machines lost, baby!  Okay, they didn't lose, but they are being replaced by appliances that will appreciate a stable home.  We bought a new fridge and dishwasher from the Sears Outlet, better known as the ding and dent store.  Every appliance in that joint has an aesthetic flaw ranging from superficial scratches to profound dents.  All of it is new, but mishandled and suffering from Outlet store low self-esteem.  Like the jelly shooting water gun on the Island of Misfit Toys, these new appliances will just be happy to be appreciated for not randomly freezing everything in the fridge while thawing out everything in the freezer.  And should the fridge or dishwasher decide to act up, they know what fate awaits them...being auctioned off to the first random freak that answers our Craigslist ad.  Appliance heaven help them should their behavior lead to such an excruciating awful end...

In other news, I forgot my lunch today and took the day off from the gym to give the ol' creaky knees a break.  Rather than serve penance and not eat lunch I decided to have pho.  It took me a while, but I'm finally eating pho with chopsticks and not asking for a fork like the culturally insensitive round eyed d*ck I used to be.  Now, I hate chopsticks.  They're stupid and inefficient, especially for eating what amounts to be noodle soup.  Why Asians insist on still using chopsticks is beyond me, but hey, I work in the International District so when in Chinatown do as the Chinese do...and eat soup with chopsticks.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, so...I'm not racially insensitive anymore.  Yep.  Anyhoo, I finally decided to squeeze lime into the broth today and it was pretty good.  However, I think that's as far as I'm going to take my pho experience.  I don't see my trying beef tendon pho anytime soon.  The menu doesn't specify the sort of tendon being served up either...is it an Achilles tendon...patella tendon?  I'll stick to my 'beef' of questionable origin and hope none of it is being imported from the EU or UK.

I will leave you with this: The Grammys were on a few days back and they were as ridiculous as ever.  To illustrate how meaningless the Grammys have become, check this out - The Beatles won a total of 11 Grammys, but 3 were for best album cover, and 2 were for engineering, meaning 6 were for performances.  The Rolling Stones have won three Grammys, one being a lifetime achievement award in 1987, another one in 1995 for best video, and one more in '95 for rock album of the year.  Queen, The Who, Tupac, Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, Run DMC, and Jimi Hendrix have won a grand total of 0 Grammys.  Taylor Swift has been awarded 7 Grammys.  The same Taylor Swift that can't carry a tune and plays a banjo the same way kids mime playing guitar with a tennis racket has been handed more Grammys than Radiohead, arguably the best band of the last 20 years.  Now, I understand that music and art are subjective, but sweet mother of sassafras, is anyone going to be digging out Taylor Swift albums 10 years from now in a non-ironic manner?  Yeah, I didn't think so...now I'm going to chase kids off my lawn and complain about the price of gasoline.     

The Band Perry

Hey there...what's up?

Anyone that has spent any time on my blog or follows me on Twitter knows how I feel about a majority of today's popular country music, especially the idiotic dreck put out by the male's of the genre.  Turn on any country station right now and you'll hear songs about beaches, hanging out in Mexico, flip flops, and sand.  Male country, um, 'artists' are churning out the musical equivalent of 'Beach Blanket Bingo'.  It's ridiculously stupid.  The biggest offender of this trend would be cartoon turtle faced Kenny Chesney, but there are others that have followed him down that path as well.  Unfortunately, the other trend in male country songs is the dumbass novelty song, something everyone's favorite albino Sasquatch, aka Toby Keith, excels at.  He could put out a double album of his imbecilic cartoon country...and people would buy it.  So I guess that particular joke is on me.

If you want to hear tough country music with some heart, grit, and soul, you have to turn to the women.  Firecrackers like Miranda Lambert are doing what they can to keep country music from digressing to mindless party anthems.  Carrie Underwood has also turned up the guts and sass now that she has let Jesus take the wheel.  And while old school icons like Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn aren't afraid of dumbing it down to turn a quick buck, they can still bring it as witnessed here and here. 

I was kind of late coming around on The Band Perry, mainly because the two male members of the band look like they walked off the set of an off-Broadway Syd & Marty Kroft Bugaloos tribute.  Their first single didn't do much for me either as it just sounded and came across as another country song by a cute girl fronted band.  The I heard 'If I Die Young' and I was just floored by the sincerity and honesty of the lyrics and melody.  Lead singer Kimberly Perry wrote what I consider to be one of the most beautiful songs I have heard from a mainstream country artist, Bugaloos be damned.

Their debut album is rock solid, but I'm seriously looking forward to their next release as The Band Perry have been working with Rick Rubin.  The first single was released a while ago, but I'm just now getting around to writing about because I'm wildly inefficient and inconsistent.  'Better Dig Two' is the first track, check it out below....

Steer Clear Of The Everclear

Saturday night was one of those nights where things escalated quickly.  I didn't stab a man in the heart with a trident and no one burst into flames, but a relatively easy going get together got away from me.  In a hurry.

Had I just stuck to Adam Carolla's Mangria, I might have escaped Saturday night unscathed.  Unfortunately, TBH decided to break out a mason jar of demon drink her cousin's husband brought over - it's called 'apple pie', and it is unholy.  The warning on the page I linked to is understated as apple pie does not sneak up on you, at least it didn't sneak up on me.  It hit me like a runaway 18-wheeler.  About 5 minutes after taking my first pull from the jar I may have started speaking in tongues.  The gathering broke up soon after, but the apple pie had just started with me. 

I vaguely remember going to bed after drinking a pint of water and a bottle of coconut water (it has more potassium than a banana!), but soon after I was in the throes of unspeakable nausea.  Then came the throwing up.  After about an hour of that unpleasantness I went back to bed, but then I started to worry that I might wake up blind.  I was pretty sure the creator of the apple pie used Everclear (hey, you can buy it from Amazon!), but one can never be too paranoid that he didn't buy the stuff from a North Bend moonshiner.  Luckily, I didn't wake up blind on Sunday morning, less lucky was the fact I was in full on Def Con 1 hangover mode.  I couldn't even keep water down for more than a few minutes and I was bed-ridden until 1:30 or so.  TBH was a trooper and kept bringing me water, but it was apple juice that finally quelled the unruly partisans storming the governor's mansion in my stomach.  Around 2pm I took an ice cold shower (not sure why I did this, just had a hunch that shocking my system with cold water would clear the fog from my head...and it worked!) and rejoined the rest of humanity.

I wasn't much fun for the first half of the Super Bowl yesterday, and I apologize to my guests for an understated performance.  I was about as animated as the corpse in Weekend At Bernie's until I got two bottles of coconut water and two pints of lemon water in me, then I started coming around.  By the fourth quarter I was letting zingers fly as the Niners came storming back only to fall short.

This morning was a wee bit rough as well, and my face told yesterday's sad sack story.  I look like I was in a cage fight with a Kodiak bear.  Dry-heaves are a mofo and did a number around my eyes and my abs are really sore, so I guess I worked my core muscles...winning!?  Even though I was still really worn out I did still manage to run 2.5 miles today to sweat the blood toxins out once and for all...looking forward to REM sleep tonight.

The lesson in all of this?  Nothing good ever comes out of a Mason jar your better half's cousin's husband brings over.  Like David Lee Roth, I've been to the edge and I stood and looked down...and no amount of preemptive coconut water and/or PowerAde will keep you from tumbling over.  Learn from my mistakes!