Ryan's Journal

I purchased a desk last week at Staples with my sister and her husband. We found a decent one with a price tag of $124.99 and asked if it was in stock. Since it wasn't, they went ahead and ordered it over their web interface for me, and I paid the bill and left.

Uneventful so far, no? The desk was delivered to me on Tuesday, but I didn't have time to crack it open until today. With it opened up, I located the directions, turned to step 1, and attempted to locate the desk top as described. A desk top is hard to miss. But there was no top in this box. Just my luck, they forgot to include the desk top.

Actually, they didn't. I noted on the box that it was "Box 1 of 2." And another little message said "Both boxes required for assembly." Ah. I looked at the desk online, and hey hey, it bright red letters it states "Please note that two purchases must be made for this deskt for a total of $248.99." How fascinating.

I called the location where I bought it, and the first person I talked to, besides being deaf, immediately snapped "I can't do that" when I explained the situation and requested the rest of the desk be sent to me, as was advertised. I asked him why he couldn't, whereupon he responded with deafening silence. Then, "I'll let you talk to the general manager, hold on." The general manager was a fair man and asked me to come in to the store.

When I arrived, I attempted to locate him and ran into the rude guy, who didn't let me finish asking where the GM was and continued to snap at everyone who requested his help (by the way, his name is Rob, he's the most unqualified sales manager I've ever seen). The GM, on the other hand, took care of everything, and now I'm getting the other half of my desk at Staples' expense. Good man.

In the meantime, I have two drawers and a bunch of random wooden parts sitting in my room, and some very tired wrists and hands. I probably won't be able to assemble the thing until next weekend, but it will be nice to have a stable area to put my monitors, unlike the table I'm using, which rather woefully sags in the center.

Thus ends the Staples tale, for now. Aren't you so much better a person for having read it.

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