Drama! Fence! Drama!

It's been a while since I broke out my Angry Consumer voice. It's simultaneously stressful and exhilarating.

We ordered parts for our privacy fence project last Saturday for delivery yesterday. We had to go back on Tuesday to change up the posts (we had mistakenly gotten the 10' posts and only needed the 8' ones) and add on some stakes and weed barrier and mulch and whatnot. We went up to the order desk at Menards, explained what happened, and dude printed up a new pick list and told us to go to the service desk to take care of the money situation. Dude asked us if we wanted the new stuff to arrive via delivery like the stuff we ordered previously, and we said yes. 8' fence posts and 10 bags of mulch aren't fitting in the ol' Cavalier, after all.

I saw the giant truck roll down the street in front of our house when I got home yesterday. I was giddy. We're three days away from shutting out our crazy neighbors! The truck driver ended up having to drop off the stuff in front of our house because his forklift truck front situation was too big to maneuver in the alley. OK, whatever. He dropped off the pallet of cement. He came back and dropped off the pallet of fence panels. He… drove off?

Woah, we're missing like $600 worth of stuff.

I got on the horn with the Menards delivery desk. Where's our stuff? He finds our order(s) and calls back. The rest of our stuff never ended up on the delivery schedule. Huh? He ummed and ahhed and was much more interested in trying to figure out whose fault it was than actually getting our stuff to our house. "Look," I said, mustering up my most patient-and-polite-but-not-taking-any-shit-angry-consumer voice, "I don't care whose fault it was because I know it wasn't ours. The bottom line is that we need our fence parts at our house by tomorrow afternoon." I know from retail experience that whenever a customer starts talking about the "bottom line" it's extremely fucking annoying and douchey but at that point I was sick of his blame game. I actually feel bad about that today. But still, we have people planning on coming over and helping with this fence project and can't change everyone's plans at the last minute, especially when the bulk of the stuff was ordered a full week in advance. He ummmed and ahhed a little bit more and said that he'd send a pickup truck with our stuff today.

And lo, as I was walking out to the garage to retrieve my scooter this morning bright and early at 6:30 am, there was a guy with a Menards pickup just finishing dropping off all the rest of our stuff. I didn't get a chance to make sure that everything was there (it fucking better be) but I am once again at peace.

And giddy. Did I mention I was giddy?