Travel Reference
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this was true. Which in turn caused me to picture kitchens all over America (not to mention
its territories and possessions) looking exactly like ours.
Finally, after about three weeks of fits and starts, the order shipped.
We considered popping open a bottle of bubbly to celebrate but ended up downing a
few shots of tequila instead.
Not quite as elegant, but mission accomplished.
Our victory lap, alas, was premature. Steve, our new carpenter, called to say that one of
the kitchen cabinets had arrived damaged.
“I'll call
Home Depot
right now and complain,” Michael said.
“That's one option,” Steve replied calmly, in the measured cadences of a Zen master.
“However, we're probably talking months for a replacement. I was hoping to get this done
pronto.”
“Okay…” Michael said, dialing down his tone to match Steve's wonderfully calm vibe.
“What are our options?”
“I'll just fix it.”
“You can do that?”
“Sure.”
Deep breath while this sank in.
“Um…great!”
“And by the way, the counters didn't arrive.”
Gulp.
“But they told me they'd shipped everything.”
Steve laughed.
“They lied.”
Michael called his friend Ana Maria at the Home Depot in Carolina.
“Where are our counters?”
“They're in Vieques,” she replied point-blank. “Where are you?”
“I'm in Washington, but that's beside the point. Our contractor said they never arrived.”
Short pause.
“I call you back.”
The news wasn't good. Even though our
Home Depot
lady in Virginia had produced
fabulous drawings based on our “to-the-quarter-inch” measurements,
Home Depot's
hard-
and-fast policy was to send out one of their own men to measure for kitchen counters.
No exceptions.
“Why didn't you tell me this before?” Michael asked Ana Maria.
“I didn't know.”
“How could she not have known something so relevant to her job?” we asked ourselves,
though this was the kind of question we were quickly learning not to ask.
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