In which the resistance is threatened with defeat
QOTD: "Forget your enemies. It's your friends you frustrate that cause all the problems."
My life, I've found, has a tendency to mandate total equilibrium. X always equals zero. In a lot of ways this is useful. For example, I'm unlikely to ever find myself living on the street, as that would be too negative. However, the strain comes in that the ebb and flow never ebbs any more than it flows. That is, the positives are restricted considerably. And, should a positive appear, an equivalent negative will appear or will have already appeared. These often occur in rapid succession such that I've coined it my win-lose scenario. Today's story focuses on shelving.
I have a CD/DVD tower that I love. It has diagonal crossing shelves that make it visually interesting. It's made of black metal. It's fairly heavy. I love it. It was, however, built with a critical and unexpected design flaw: the heavy, metal base is hollow and the tower supports do not extend to the opposite side of the base. As a result, the loaded tower exerts pressure on the center of the hollow base and bends that metal, resulting in the tower slowly leaning farther and farther forward. This has distressed me and I've been looking for a replacement shelf for some time, however, my tastes are elite and my budget is not. So, when loserface told me Wal-Mart had a remarkable sale on shelving, I decided to make an exception to my ardent avoidance of the store and capitalize.
I checked the Gulfport store. I wanted black. They did not have black. Well, okay, they did have black. They had two boxes that contained black. The contents were pulverized, but they did have two boxes containing black. So on my way back from Starkville, I stopped at the Hardy Street Wal-Mart in Hattiesburg. No black. So I checked the Hwy 49 Wal-Mart in Hattiesburg. Two black! And not obviously pulverized. I bought one. It was heavy. It had a "team lift" logo on the side of the box. I managed to get it into a shopping cart and into my trunk and then out of my trunk and up three flights of stairs. There, I noticed it said the box was 70 pounds. That's right at half my scrawny weight, folks. And that's mostly bone, not muscle. Big head. But hooray! Cheap shelf achieved! Finally, forward motion! Success.
So tonight I decide I'm going to let food cook and I'm going to assemble this shelf since I have a guest coming toward the end of the month and I need to get the carpet cleaned and I can only do that with a clean apartment and I have to give three days notice for the cleaners and I'm running out of time and I need to get things done. So I start assembling this shelf and it reminded me why I no longer buy things that need to be assembled. But I can follow instructions. Or so I thought. I got to step 2 and the instructions were a little strange. The instructions actually were a little strange, but what got my attention is that panel A was a side panel with a marker in the instructions to indicate which side the finish was on. (apparently they couldn't be bothered to put a false finish on BOTH sides to prevent error, or, god forbid, use real paint) When I examined these two panels to determine if I had placed the screws properly, I discovered that one of my panels did not have a finish on either side. Yes, that's right, there would be bare particle board on the front of a black shelf. Further investigation revealed that the number of holes was not only different between these two boards, but the board in question didn't even have equal numbers of shelf adjustment holes on just that board. To clarify:
If I'm going to buy a series of slabs of glue filled with the saw blade remnants of real wood, made to be the heaviest, weakest, least water-resistant material mankind has ever created furnishings with, I at least expect it to at least come with the right number of holes. And, if the seller chooses to source substandard labor, I expect at least enough quality control that if the product isn't meant to be wood colored, that the front of the shelf - at the very least - not be wood colored. Shelf quest fail.
So do I take it back to the local Wal-Mart, risking my life teetering down staircases, knowing that they don't have one in stock to exchange it for and at best would get my 25 bucks back (a good deal if the shelf HAD BEEN COMPLETE) or even $25 in useless store credit? No. What I am going to do is keep the shelf. I'm going to finish it and keep it. I'll keep it in my living room. I'll put black tape over the missing finish like the white trash Wal-Mart targets and I will point out what an awful shelf it is to everyone that enters my home. And then what will I do?
I'll tell them all it's from Wal-Mart.
My life, I've found, has a tendency to mandate total equilibrium. X always equals zero. In a lot of ways this is useful. For example, I'm unlikely to ever find myself living on the street, as that would be too negative. However, the strain comes in that the ebb and flow never ebbs any more than it flows. That is, the positives are restricted considerably. And, should a positive appear, an equivalent negative will appear or will have already appeared. These often occur in rapid succession such that I've coined it my win-lose scenario. Today's story focuses on shelving.
I have a CD/DVD tower that I love. It has diagonal crossing shelves that make it visually interesting. It's made of black metal. It's fairly heavy. I love it. It was, however, built with a critical and unexpected design flaw: the heavy, metal base is hollow and the tower supports do not extend to the opposite side of the base. As a result, the loaded tower exerts pressure on the center of the hollow base and bends that metal, resulting in the tower slowly leaning farther and farther forward. This has distressed me and I've been looking for a replacement shelf for some time, however, my tastes are elite and my budget is not. So, when loserface told me Wal-Mart had a remarkable sale on shelving, I decided to make an exception to my ardent avoidance of the store and capitalize.
I checked the Gulfport store. I wanted black. They did not have black. Well, okay, they did have black. They had two boxes that contained black. The contents were pulverized, but they did have two boxes containing black. So on my way back from Starkville, I stopped at the Hardy Street Wal-Mart in Hattiesburg. No black. So I checked the Hwy 49 Wal-Mart in Hattiesburg. Two black! And not obviously pulverized. I bought one. It was heavy. It had a "team lift" logo on the side of the box. I managed to get it into a shopping cart and into my trunk and then out of my trunk and up three flights of stairs. There, I noticed it said the box was 70 pounds. That's right at half my scrawny weight, folks. And that's mostly bone, not muscle. Big head. But hooray! Cheap shelf achieved! Finally, forward motion! Success.
So tonight I decide I'm going to let food cook and I'm going to assemble this shelf since I have a guest coming toward the end of the month and I need to get the carpet cleaned and I can only do that with a clean apartment and I have to give three days notice for the cleaners and I'm running out of time and I need to get things done. So I start assembling this shelf and it reminded me why I no longer buy things that need to be assembled. But I can follow instructions. Or so I thought. I got to step 2 and the instructions were a little strange. The instructions actually were a little strange, but what got my attention is that panel A was a side panel with a marker in the instructions to indicate which side the finish was on. (apparently they couldn't be bothered to put a false finish on BOTH sides to prevent error, or, god forbid, use real paint) When I examined these two panels to determine if I had placed the screws properly, I discovered that one of my panels did not have a finish on either side. Yes, that's right, there would be bare particle board on the front of a black shelf. Further investigation revealed that the number of holes was not only different between these two boards, but the board in question didn't even have equal numbers of shelf adjustment holes on just that board. To clarify:
If I'm going to buy a series of slabs of glue filled with the saw blade remnants of real wood, made to be the heaviest, weakest, least water-resistant material mankind has ever created furnishings with, I at least expect it to at least come with the right number of holes. And, if the seller chooses to source substandard labor, I expect at least enough quality control that if the product isn't meant to be wood colored, that the front of the shelf - at the very least - not be wood colored. Shelf quest fail.
So do I take it back to the local Wal-Mart, risking my life teetering down staircases, knowing that they don't have one in stock to exchange it for and at best would get my 25 bucks back (a good deal if the shelf HAD BEEN COMPLETE) or even $25 in useless store credit? No. What I am going to do is keep the shelf. I'm going to finish it and keep it. I'll keep it in my living room. I'll put black tape over the missing finish like the white trash Wal-Mart targets and I will point out what an awful shelf it is to everyone that enters my home. And then what will I do?
I'll tell them all it's from Wal-Mart.