Friday, November 03, 2006
Phone company idiots (isn't that redundant?)
My husband's bunglings (see my previous post) might have seemed bad, but not even he can compete with the degree of fouled-up-ness that a major corporation can create; I try not to do consecutive rants about this sort of thing so that new readers don't think my life is a non-stop mess, but this one was too good not to share:
I live in one of America's biggest cities, and am thus provided with phone service by a huge corporation; today, one of our phone lines died, and my husband called them to arrange for a technician to come and fix the problem. The 1st inkling of trouble was when the woman he talked to insisted that she could give NO clue as to when the tech would be here, not even the DAY... but that of course someone had to be home when he arrived in order for him to handle the problem if it turned out to be an inside wiring issue. That seemed insane, but these big corporations are getting more and more arrogant and contemptuous of customers so I didn't doubt it was true; with the weekend coming up, and plans already made, though, I had to at least know what days and hours the techs work during so I could narrow it down a little, which meant that I had to call them and get that info.
You know the sort of music they play in a drama or suspense movie to indicate that doom is approaching? Take a moment to imagine a few bars of that in your head.
The geniuses at the phone company have switched to a voice-recognition system to handle incoming calls; I have yet to get through a session with one of these frigging things without problems (unlike using buttons, which is faster and produces perfectly understood signals), so I have a low opinion of these sorts of systems from the get-go... but this one was the worst yet. I tried several times to enter my phone #, but it never let me get in more than 6 of the 10 digits. It wouldn't give me a menu of options for how to proceed at each juncture without 1st trying a bunch of times to make me describe what I wanted verbally, guessing incorrectly what I meant, asking me if it was right, and making me say "no"; there's no way to push a button to get out of the voice system or request a menu, and needless to say their goal is to prevent you from being able to talk to their agents if possible, so I was TRAPPED. When it finally claimed to be transferring me to a human being, a loud metallic tone came on the line and continued until I gave up and hung up several minutes later... and then had to call back. The 2nd time, it picked up the call, started the recorded message, and gave me a DIFFERENT loud metallic tone that went on until I hung up. The 3rd time, I slogged determinedly through, giving answers and pressing buttons almost at random because of course there were never any options offered that matched my inquiry... and then, miraculously, I reached a PERSON.
He told me that they could, and in fact were supposed to, give a 4-hour window on a specific day as the time frame in which the tech guy would show up; I was happy to hear it, but very much less than thrilled that the original employee had either been a moron or lied. An attempt to find out when my appointment window was failed, so I was transferred to the tech department... and another branch of the voice system, which I spent an additional 10 minutes struggling through until it decided that I was trying to SET an appointment, and, with no way to backtrack, I had to hang up and call back AGAIN.
This time, I was out of patience; to every question it asked, I responded "I need to talk to a human being"... and this did in fact connect me to a person far quicker than anything else had. I explained what had happened so far, and made it clear that I wanted to be transferred to an AGENT in tech support, NOT to their voice system; to give the service guy who was helping me at that point credit, he stayed on the line with me until it was confirmed that I'd reached a person rather than the system or another tone. In response to my question about the time and day I could expect the tech guy to come, I was told that... brace yourself... there was NO appointment set up for my household. He re-checked it, and discovered that there wasn't even a record of any contact between my home and his department that day; he also told me that they would NEVER tell a customer that there was no time frame or even day that they could guarantee that their arrival would be on. He had no explanation for the conversation my husband had had earlier, but he determined somehow that there was a short in the dead line, and tried resetting it, which he said sometimes helped; that didn't fix it, but I figured he knew his stuff well enough that he'd be able to set an appointment for a repair guy in the proper way, so we did that-let's just hope it's an OUTside wiring problem and thus free.
Naturally, I was dismayed at the thought that we could've been waiting for DAYS, with someone always having to be home, for a non-existent appointment to happen, only to discover when we finally called back to complain that there never WAS an appointment and they never just show up at unplanned days and times in any case; I asked to speak to someone who could track down what had happened, so I was transferred back to customer service (a true oxymoron if there ever was one) again. The tech guy had suggested that maybe some confused agent had done who knows what that they THOUGHT was setting an appointment but wasn't, but didn't have access to that area of the system to check it out; this was the 1st thing I asked the latest service guy to do, but he couldn't find any record of it, and in fact announced triumphantly that there was no record of any calls from my house, or of my account being accessed, before my own 1st call about an hour before... as if to imply that perhaps I was making it all up and he'd just "proved" it.
It was clear that it was time to converse with a supervisor, and my request to be connected to one led to the grimmest aspect of this whole debacle, in my mind; unlike every other company in the country, they do NOT have supervisors available to get on the line with customers... if you want to speak to one, you have to sign up for a callback within a certain time range on whatever the next available day is. I DID sign up, believe me, and whoever's unfortunate enough to get assigned to me is going to get a VERY detailed description of the train wreck their staff and computers created from what should've been a simple call to schedule a repair; don't worry, I'm not going to vent my ire on an innocent person, but they're responsible for finding and correcting problems, and as much as I'm paying them they're damned-sure gonna fix the bugs I experienced in their system, record my complaints about how difficult it is to use it, and find out what the truth is behind the phone call my husband had where he was misinformed, possibly lied to, and all record of it vanished.
Although as usual I'm the one required to spend hours dealing with corporate nitwits, my husband will be sharing the joy this time; since our interior phone-related wiring is massively intertwined with our network, which only he can deal with, he's going to have to hang out for 4 hours waiting for the repair guy so that if the latter needs to get to that section of the wiring he can safely detach and then reattach the component parts... although if the repair guy DOES need to come in the house, it'll disprove my husband's assertion that the problem CAN'T be inside because if it was the short on the line would be affecting the DSL, which it isn't.
Never a dull moment; just cross your fingers for me that this gets handled quickly, so that we don't have to limp along without that phone line until Monday... and that if we do that the short doesn't start affecting the DSL, because if we have to spend a weekend competing for the use of one dialup line one of us is gonna end up buried in coffee cans in the back yard.
I'll leave you with something amusing, albeit in a scary way:
I saw an auction for a Sesame Street brand pair of overalls for an infant boy
http://cgi.ebay.com/RACOON-SESAME-STREET-OVERALLS-3-6-months-boys-SWEATER_W0QQitemZ200042264058QQihZ010QQcategoryZ57756QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting
They have a raccoon face on them, and under that it says "racoon," just like that with the 2nd "c" missing; yes, a piece of clothing licensed by the TV show dedicated to educating small children about things like spelling has a misspelled word embroidered on it, lol!!
I live in one of America's biggest cities, and am thus provided with phone service by a huge corporation; today, one of our phone lines died, and my husband called them to arrange for a technician to come and fix the problem. The 1st inkling of trouble was when the woman he talked to insisted that she could give NO clue as to when the tech would be here, not even the DAY... but that of course someone had to be home when he arrived in order for him to handle the problem if it turned out to be an inside wiring issue. That seemed insane, but these big corporations are getting more and more arrogant and contemptuous of customers so I didn't doubt it was true; with the weekend coming up, and plans already made, though, I had to at least know what days and hours the techs work during so I could narrow it down a little, which meant that I had to call them and get that info.
You know the sort of music they play in a drama or suspense movie to indicate that doom is approaching? Take a moment to imagine a few bars of that in your head.
The geniuses at the phone company have switched to a voice-recognition system to handle incoming calls; I have yet to get through a session with one of these frigging things without problems (unlike using buttons, which is faster and produces perfectly understood signals), so I have a low opinion of these sorts of systems from the get-go... but this one was the worst yet. I tried several times to enter my phone #, but it never let me get in more than 6 of the 10 digits. It wouldn't give me a menu of options for how to proceed at each juncture without 1st trying a bunch of times to make me describe what I wanted verbally, guessing incorrectly what I meant, asking me if it was right, and making me say "no"; there's no way to push a button to get out of the voice system or request a menu, and needless to say their goal is to prevent you from being able to talk to their agents if possible, so I was TRAPPED. When it finally claimed to be transferring me to a human being, a loud metallic tone came on the line and continued until I gave up and hung up several minutes later... and then had to call back. The 2nd time, it picked up the call, started the recorded message, and gave me a DIFFERENT loud metallic tone that went on until I hung up. The 3rd time, I slogged determinedly through, giving answers and pressing buttons almost at random because of course there were never any options offered that matched my inquiry... and then, miraculously, I reached a PERSON.
He told me that they could, and in fact were supposed to, give a 4-hour window on a specific day as the time frame in which the tech guy would show up; I was happy to hear it, but very much less than thrilled that the original employee had either been a moron or lied. An attempt to find out when my appointment window was failed, so I was transferred to the tech department... and another branch of the voice system, which I spent an additional 10 minutes struggling through until it decided that I was trying to SET an appointment, and, with no way to backtrack, I had to hang up and call back AGAIN.
This time, I was out of patience; to every question it asked, I responded "I need to talk to a human being"... and this did in fact connect me to a person far quicker than anything else had. I explained what had happened so far, and made it clear that I wanted to be transferred to an AGENT in tech support, NOT to their voice system; to give the service guy who was helping me at that point credit, he stayed on the line with me until it was confirmed that I'd reached a person rather than the system or another tone. In response to my question about the time and day I could expect the tech guy to come, I was told that... brace yourself... there was NO appointment set up for my household. He re-checked it, and discovered that there wasn't even a record of any contact between my home and his department that day; he also told me that they would NEVER tell a customer that there was no time frame or even day that they could guarantee that their arrival would be on. He had no explanation for the conversation my husband had had earlier, but he determined somehow that there was a short in the dead line, and tried resetting it, which he said sometimes helped; that didn't fix it, but I figured he knew his stuff well enough that he'd be able to set an appointment for a repair guy in the proper way, so we did that-let's just hope it's an OUTside wiring problem and thus free.
Naturally, I was dismayed at the thought that we could've been waiting for DAYS, with someone always having to be home, for a non-existent appointment to happen, only to discover when we finally called back to complain that there never WAS an appointment and they never just show up at unplanned days and times in any case; I asked to speak to someone who could track down what had happened, so I was transferred back to customer service (a true oxymoron if there ever was one) again. The tech guy had suggested that maybe some confused agent had done who knows what that they THOUGHT was setting an appointment but wasn't, but didn't have access to that area of the system to check it out; this was the 1st thing I asked the latest service guy to do, but he couldn't find any record of it, and in fact announced triumphantly that there was no record of any calls from my house, or of my account being accessed, before my own 1st call about an hour before... as if to imply that perhaps I was making it all up and he'd just "proved" it.
It was clear that it was time to converse with a supervisor, and my request to be connected to one led to the grimmest aspect of this whole debacle, in my mind; unlike every other company in the country, they do NOT have supervisors available to get on the line with customers... if you want to speak to one, you have to sign up for a callback within a certain time range on whatever the next available day is. I DID sign up, believe me, and whoever's unfortunate enough to get assigned to me is going to get a VERY detailed description of the train wreck their staff and computers created from what should've been a simple call to schedule a repair; don't worry, I'm not going to vent my ire on an innocent person, but they're responsible for finding and correcting problems, and as much as I'm paying them they're damned-sure gonna fix the bugs I experienced in their system, record my complaints about how difficult it is to use it, and find out what the truth is behind the phone call my husband had where he was misinformed, possibly lied to, and all record of it vanished.
Although as usual I'm the one required to spend hours dealing with corporate nitwits, my husband will be sharing the joy this time; since our interior phone-related wiring is massively intertwined with our network, which only he can deal with, he's going to have to hang out for 4 hours waiting for the repair guy so that if the latter needs to get to that section of the wiring he can safely detach and then reattach the component parts... although if the repair guy DOES need to come in the house, it'll disprove my husband's assertion that the problem CAN'T be inside because if it was the short on the line would be affecting the DSL, which it isn't.
Never a dull moment; just cross your fingers for me that this gets handled quickly, so that we don't have to limp along without that phone line until Monday... and that if we do that the short doesn't start affecting the DSL, because if we have to spend a weekend competing for the use of one dialup line one of us is gonna end up buried in coffee cans in the back yard.
I'll leave you with something amusing, albeit in a scary way:
I saw an auction for a Sesame Street brand pair of overalls for an infant boy
http://cgi.ebay.com/RACOON-SESAME-STREET-OVERALLS-3-6-months-boys-SWEATER_W0QQitemZ200042264058QQihZ010QQcategoryZ57756QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting
They have a raccoon face on them, and under that it says "racoon," just like that with the 2nd "c" missing; yes, a piece of clothing licensed by the TV show dedicated to educating small children about things like spelling has a misspelled word embroidered on it, lol!!
Monday, October 30, 2006
WalMart + husband = DISASTER
First, some good news; I passed *******150,000 hits******* today!! Thanks to all my readers for making it happen!! xo
I'll preface this post by explaining something about my husband; he's legendary for losing receipts. He can go to ONE store, get in the car and drive straight home, and when he gets here the receipt is gone; we can search his pockets, the bag(s) and the car all we want, but we'll never find it. He even goes to the drive-up teller, or a drive-through fast food place, gets a receipt when he's IN the car, comes right home and the receipt is gone. It's not that he's not taking the receipts, or that he's absentmindedly tossing them, because I've SEEN him take receipts, put them in his pocket or a bag, and by the time we get home they're GONE, never to be seen again.
As a result, I long since developed the habit of snatching receipts from him whenever we're shopping together; as is typical of habitual screw-ups, he tends to be petulant about it, as if his sacred manhood is being impugned by the implication that he can't hang onto a receipt... and reminding him of his disgraceful record in this area doesn't change anything. Undeterred, I've continued with my policy of receipt-grabbing, and refuse to cave in to his philosophy of "don't return it, just throw it out," which he created in his many pre-me years of inept handling of problematic purchases. With that said:
Last week, we made a rare stop at the most inconveniently located WalMart in our county; in what I thought at the time was a big stroke of luck, they had the exact sort of subtly-patterned khakis that I needed to fill in the spectrum of my pants wardrobe between jeans and formal (ie business or dressy) varieties. I was able to find 2 different patterns in my size, and felt a warm sense of accomplishment when we took them to the register; one of the pairs of pants didn't have the store tag, but they were able to scan the others twice because they had the same UPC, so it was ok.
As we were leaving the store, the unthinkable happened; for the 1st time in literally YEARS, I forgot to grab the receipt.
I didn't realize what had happened until later that evening, when I unpacked our many WalMart bags and discovered what the glaring fluorescents of the store had hidden; there was a shadowy little dark spot on the front of one of the pants. Careful rubbing did nothing to reduce it, and, worse, some of the pigment in the pattern was disrupted in that spot, so I had to accept that they needed to be returned; although there'd been other pairs of that style in my size, since they clearly weren't fully colorfast I was just going to have to do without them.
That was when I realized that I hadn't confiscated the receipt.
I frantically searched all the WalMart bags, and my husband searched his pockets and the car; no receipt. Seeing that my blood pressure was reaching quadruple digits, he tried to reassure me by pointing out that they'd almost certainly take the pants back since I had the tags; knowing my luck as well as he does at this point in our lives, he wasn't too surprised when I told him that it was the pair withOUT the store tag that was the problem. Most stores will STILL take an item back if it's got SOME of the tags and is something they're currently selling, although only for store credit; keeping track of the credit form, and making sure it's used before it expires, is a pain, but would be better than nothing.
Because he'd eaten the receipt (well, what do YOU think he did with it?), my husband agreed that he should be the one to do the way out of the way drive the next day to do the return; as always, he milked it until the last possible moment (he gets some sort of thrill from leaping through the door of a store 2 seconds before it closes), but he went... and came back with the pants. It turns out that at least that particular WalMart closes its customer service desk before the store closes; ignoring that my eyes were bugging out of my head with stress, he airily announced that he'd go again the next day, so there was nothing to worry about.
The following night, he napped after dinner; when I woke him up to tell him to get going, he belatedly informed me that customer service leaves TWO HOURS before the stores closes, meaning that it was already too late to go. When I inquired, in a voice that could shatter granite, why he hadn't apprised me of that particular detail BEFORE he went to sleep, he sheepishly replied that he'd "meant to" set his alarm to handle the issue, but had failed to do so... but that he'd go the NEXT night, so no worries.
The next night, he DID go, and at a proper time; he returned with the pants AGAIN. He'd been told that he needed the store tag or the receipt to do any sort of return, but that if he got a new pair he could then use the receipt to return them and the tag to return the original pair. When I asked him where the new pants were, he replied that he didn't want to take that step, a step that was inarguably necessary, without asking me 1st, so he hadn't gotten them; when queried as to why he didn't call me from one of the pay phones right outside the store, he said, "Uh... I don't know." He assured me that he'd do it the NEXT night, so I should stop fretting.
The next night, he did indeed go AGAIN... only to discover that WalMart, contrary to what the previous service person had told him and what most stores do, will NOT take a return even for store credit if you've got the store tag but no receipt, and furthermore that it was a moot point because thanks to the DAYS of delay they no longer had the pants in my size, so no sleight of hand could be done in any case.
At that juncture, my husband thought we should just throw the pants out, since it wasn't worth driving to every WalMart in the county looking for another pair in the right size; when I pointed out that we had this marvelous new invention called a PHONE, he insisted that no trustworthy information could be obtained that way, because the WalMart employees wouldn't be capable of looking for the pants, or willing to do an honest search, or blah blah blah. Ignoring him, I called the closest WalMart; after a few minutes on hold, I was told that a pair of those pants in my size had been found, and I could come and get them from the layaway department at any time. Surprised but willing to play along, my husband agreed to go and get them; he mentioned that he wanted to get a jar of petroleum jelly while he was there, and I lectured him at length about why it absolutely, positively must NOT be put in the bag with the pants, because even rounded corners could poke and rub, and these pants couldn't take ANY mistreatment. I also made him take a box with him to bring the receipt home in; he complained bitterly, as he always does when forced to use it, but he's safely brought home 100% of receipts put in there, and if he lost a SECOND receipt for these same pants my head would have exploded, so that was that.
Off he went, and came back a while later with the pants; I took them to the bedroom, and as I shifted the bag to empty it onto the bed I felt something large and hard in it... I started screaming even before I dumped it out and discovered that a BELT had been wrapped up with the pants. My husband, leaping into the room in response to my shrieks, started his standard disclaimer that nothing was wrong, that I was freaking out over nothing... and then I interrupted to indicate where the tab of the buckle had made TWO deep indentations in the pants (eerily, right on the part of the thigh where the spot was on the original pair), which, when popped out, revealed that some of the pigment had been scraped off in both dents.
You couldn't put this story in a book or a movie, because no one would believe that anyone could be STUPID enough to allow a checker to put something with METAL PARTS in the bag with ANY pair of pants other than jeans, much less with pants that are known to be easy to damage, much less after being WARNED about the possible dangers from a much less potentially disastrous item. You know what his excuse was? I hadn't said anything about BELTS, so how was he supposed to know a belt could hurt the pants? Yes, a grown man actually stood there and claimed that he would have to have been TOLD about any item other than the one we'd discussed for him to be aware that it was a potential problem.
So there I was, with TWO messed-up pairs of the same pants, with no way to know if there were any others of my size left anywhere, and looking at trying to juggle TWO returns at best, and 1 return and one thrown away pair at worst; I scorched my husband right down to his bone marrow for having created such an insane fiasco, believe me. With nothing left to lose, I went to work on the new pants; I dripped water on the dents, pushed them out from the inside, and gave them the most infinitesimal rubs to blend around the pigment... and after several rounds of this, with my heart in my throat the whole time, I got them to the point where you can't pick out where they were dented or scraped anymore (in large part because the pattern is subtle but busy). WHEW!!
My blood pressure was sinking back into triple digits when I saw the store tag protruding partway out of the waistband; just out of sheer anal-ness, I pulled it out... and there was a red SALE sticker on it. I don't know what was worse; realizing that if I'd bought the pants a few days later I could have gotten them for HALF price, or realizing that it was possible we'd be stuck with store credit after all because they were a clearance item (we DID eventually get cash back, thank goodness).
All this for a pair of pants I don't want anymore, will be afraid to wear, and get a surge of stress every time I think of them.
The next time my husband tries to give me sh*t for demanding that he hand over a receipt, he's gonna regret it, lol.
I'll preface this post by explaining something about my husband; he's legendary for losing receipts. He can go to ONE store, get in the car and drive straight home, and when he gets here the receipt is gone; we can search his pockets, the bag(s) and the car all we want, but we'll never find it. He even goes to the drive-up teller, or a drive-through fast food place, gets a receipt when he's IN the car, comes right home and the receipt is gone. It's not that he's not taking the receipts, or that he's absentmindedly tossing them, because I've SEEN him take receipts, put them in his pocket or a bag, and by the time we get home they're GONE, never to be seen again.
As a result, I long since developed the habit of snatching receipts from him whenever we're shopping together; as is typical of habitual screw-ups, he tends to be petulant about it, as if his sacred manhood is being impugned by the implication that he can't hang onto a receipt... and reminding him of his disgraceful record in this area doesn't change anything. Undeterred, I've continued with my policy of receipt-grabbing, and refuse to cave in to his philosophy of "don't return it, just throw it out," which he created in his many pre-me years of inept handling of problematic purchases. With that said:
Last week, we made a rare stop at the most inconveniently located WalMart in our county; in what I thought at the time was a big stroke of luck, they had the exact sort of subtly-patterned khakis that I needed to fill in the spectrum of my pants wardrobe between jeans and formal (ie business or dressy) varieties. I was able to find 2 different patterns in my size, and felt a warm sense of accomplishment when we took them to the register; one of the pairs of pants didn't have the store tag, but they were able to scan the others twice because they had the same UPC, so it was ok.
As we were leaving the store, the unthinkable happened; for the 1st time in literally YEARS, I forgot to grab the receipt.
I didn't realize what had happened until later that evening, when I unpacked our many WalMart bags and discovered what the glaring fluorescents of the store had hidden; there was a shadowy little dark spot on the front of one of the pants. Careful rubbing did nothing to reduce it, and, worse, some of the pigment in the pattern was disrupted in that spot, so I had to accept that they needed to be returned; although there'd been other pairs of that style in my size, since they clearly weren't fully colorfast I was just going to have to do without them.
That was when I realized that I hadn't confiscated the receipt.
I frantically searched all the WalMart bags, and my husband searched his pockets and the car; no receipt. Seeing that my blood pressure was reaching quadruple digits, he tried to reassure me by pointing out that they'd almost certainly take the pants back since I had the tags; knowing my luck as well as he does at this point in our lives, he wasn't too surprised when I told him that it was the pair withOUT the store tag that was the problem. Most stores will STILL take an item back if it's got SOME of the tags and is something they're currently selling, although only for store credit; keeping track of the credit form, and making sure it's used before it expires, is a pain, but would be better than nothing.
Because he'd eaten the receipt (well, what do YOU think he did with it?), my husband agreed that he should be the one to do the way out of the way drive the next day to do the return; as always, he milked it until the last possible moment (he gets some sort of thrill from leaping through the door of a store 2 seconds before it closes), but he went... and came back with the pants. It turns out that at least that particular WalMart closes its customer service desk before the store closes; ignoring that my eyes were bugging out of my head with stress, he airily announced that he'd go again the next day, so there was nothing to worry about.
The following night, he napped after dinner; when I woke him up to tell him to get going, he belatedly informed me that customer service leaves TWO HOURS before the stores closes, meaning that it was already too late to go. When I inquired, in a voice that could shatter granite, why he hadn't apprised me of that particular detail BEFORE he went to sleep, he sheepishly replied that he'd "meant to" set his alarm to handle the issue, but had failed to do so... but that he'd go the NEXT night, so no worries.
The next night, he DID go, and at a proper time; he returned with the pants AGAIN. He'd been told that he needed the store tag or the receipt to do any sort of return, but that if he got a new pair he could then use the receipt to return them and the tag to return the original pair. When I asked him where the new pants were, he replied that he didn't want to take that step, a step that was inarguably necessary, without asking me 1st, so he hadn't gotten them; when queried as to why he didn't call me from one of the pay phones right outside the store, he said, "Uh... I don't know." He assured me that he'd do it the NEXT night, so I should stop fretting.
The next night, he did indeed go AGAIN... only to discover that WalMart, contrary to what the previous service person had told him and what most stores do, will NOT take a return even for store credit if you've got the store tag but no receipt, and furthermore that it was a moot point because thanks to the DAYS of delay they no longer had the pants in my size, so no sleight of hand could be done in any case.
At that juncture, my husband thought we should just throw the pants out, since it wasn't worth driving to every WalMart in the county looking for another pair in the right size; when I pointed out that we had this marvelous new invention called a PHONE, he insisted that no trustworthy information could be obtained that way, because the WalMart employees wouldn't be capable of looking for the pants, or willing to do an honest search, or blah blah blah. Ignoring him, I called the closest WalMart; after a few minutes on hold, I was told that a pair of those pants in my size had been found, and I could come and get them from the layaway department at any time. Surprised but willing to play along, my husband agreed to go and get them; he mentioned that he wanted to get a jar of petroleum jelly while he was there, and I lectured him at length about why it absolutely, positively must NOT be put in the bag with the pants, because even rounded corners could poke and rub, and these pants couldn't take ANY mistreatment. I also made him take a box with him to bring the receipt home in; he complained bitterly, as he always does when forced to use it, but he's safely brought home 100% of receipts put in there, and if he lost a SECOND receipt for these same pants my head would have exploded, so that was that.
Off he went, and came back a while later with the pants; I took them to the bedroom, and as I shifted the bag to empty it onto the bed I felt something large and hard in it... I started screaming even before I dumped it out and discovered that a BELT had been wrapped up with the pants. My husband, leaping into the room in response to my shrieks, started his standard disclaimer that nothing was wrong, that I was freaking out over nothing... and then I interrupted to indicate where the tab of the buckle had made TWO deep indentations in the pants (eerily, right on the part of the thigh where the spot was on the original pair), which, when popped out, revealed that some of the pigment had been scraped off in both dents.
You couldn't put this story in a book or a movie, because no one would believe that anyone could be STUPID enough to allow a checker to put something with METAL PARTS in the bag with ANY pair of pants other than jeans, much less with pants that are known to be easy to damage, much less after being WARNED about the possible dangers from a much less potentially disastrous item. You know what his excuse was? I hadn't said anything about BELTS, so how was he supposed to know a belt could hurt the pants? Yes, a grown man actually stood there and claimed that he would have to have been TOLD about any item other than the one we'd discussed for him to be aware that it was a potential problem.
So there I was, with TWO messed-up pairs of the same pants, with no way to know if there were any others of my size left anywhere, and looking at trying to juggle TWO returns at best, and 1 return and one thrown away pair at worst; I scorched my husband right down to his bone marrow for having created such an insane fiasco, believe me. With nothing left to lose, I went to work on the new pants; I dripped water on the dents, pushed them out from the inside, and gave them the most infinitesimal rubs to blend around the pigment... and after several rounds of this, with my heart in my throat the whole time, I got them to the point where you can't pick out where they were dented or scraped anymore (in large part because the pattern is subtle but busy). WHEW!!
My blood pressure was sinking back into triple digits when I saw the store tag protruding partway out of the waistband; just out of sheer anal-ness, I pulled it out... and there was a red SALE sticker on it. I don't know what was worse; realizing that if I'd bought the pants a few days later I could have gotten them for HALF price, or realizing that it was possible we'd be stuck with store credit after all because they were a clearance item (we DID eventually get cash back, thank goodness).
All this for a pair of pants I don't want anymore, will be afraid to wear, and get a surge of stress every time I think of them.
The next time my husband tries to give me sh*t for demanding that he hand over a receipt, he's gonna regret it, lol.
