Why Home Depot Can Suck My Ass

Pretty good weekend, as far the poker goes. My love/hate relationship with Party continues, as the BONUSMAR reload (7x raked hands, up to $200 maximum) hit at a fairly inopportune time. I can't justify not knocking those out but I'm always scrambling at the end of the month to get all the Cryptos done.

So the wife and I were ready to buy a patio set. We'd wanted to for awhile but I finally got my fat bonus at work, so this weekend was designated spend-lots-of-money-on-a-patio-set weekend.

After browsing around (with an emphasis on browsing) at a swanky place that had nothing under a couple of thousand dollars, we end up at Home Depot. All we want is a decent wrought iron patio set, with an umbrella. That's it. Nothing fancy and/or schmancy. Well, we liked some of the fancy (and a little of the schmancy) but were shopping on the lower range of the patio set spectrum, able to spend $500-$600.

Home Depot had one we liked, we could afford it, decided to get it, end of story. Right? Nay, nay...

It quickly became apparent that no one was willing to deal with the hassle of selling us something unwieldy like a patio set. No one. Responses ranged from a blatant ignoring of my wife by a gaggle of employees who were just sitting there talking and staring at the floor ("Ma'am, we're busy, you'll have to wait") to an assorted neverending daisy chain of "No, see, Outside Garden handles all that stuff" -- "What, they told you we did that? No, you need to talk to Inside Garden" -- "No, see, Building Materials handles all the patio stuff because they're set up in their area".

So we finally just left. No patio set. For some bizarre reason, I thought it'd be better at the Home Depot we normally shop at, despite the fact that the customer service there lately has been even more blatanly rude and bizzare. (An employee actually argued with me that no such thing as a welding cap even exists, when I asked if they stocked them. I was tempted to actually go back with one, when we bought them from a welding supply store, and start smiting him about the head and shoulders with it, screaming "See, beeyatch! Welding cap! Boo ya!")

But yeah. We go to another Home Depot and try to buy the exact same patio set. This time a high school/college ageish kid actually tries to help us, seems to understand what we want, then disappears into the back for half an hour or so, looking for the patio set. Five minutes after he leaves I locate said patio set, which, unfortunately, is on the second level of their built-in wall shelving, about twenty feet off the ground, in a ginormous box. To be fair, it'd be a bitch to get it down, and I understand why he'd rather locate one in the back instead of retrieving it.

Half an hour later, though, he finally comes back, admitting defeat. He swears they have 3 of them in stock but that he just can't find it. When asked about the one on the shelf he mumbles something about it being the wrong color. Umm, okay. My bad. Didn't realize that one was a shade of Way-Up-On-A-Shelf-And-I-Don't-Want-To-Deal-With-It, intead of the normal black color that the patio set comes in. He claimed he'd call me in an hour when he found the set and insisted on writing my phone number down in magic marker on the back of a paint samle card. Uh huh, sure you're going to call me.

Next morning we went to Lowe's and found a patio set, purchased it, had it loaded in my truck in less than fifteen minutes.

In short, hello Lowes. Home Depot, suck my ass.