I Won't Stand For You Not Selling Me These Chairs

I was in the market for some patio furniture. Being me, I did an exhaustive online search. I found a company that had several nice sets, so I drove up to Syracuse, a little over an hour away, to check them out in person. Call me crazy, I think you should sit in a chair before you buy it. Everything there was gorgeous, but I noticed no prices were displayed, which I assumed was a very bad sign. Nor would the manager tell me the prices; he insisted on emailing them to me after I left. If I’d been him, I’d never want to be in the same room with people learning how much his furniture cost either. Just the cushions for one of the chairs were $281. I wasn’t about to pay more for my outside furniture than my indoor furniture, so I kept looking.

I found something online I liked at another store, but when I arrived there in person, they told me they had completely sold out. Now it’s a quest.

I then saw a set I liked on the Walmart website, which identified all the stores in a 50-mile radius that carried the product. I called every one of them and not one actually had it in stock. So I called every Walmart in a 75-mile radius. Same. I called the manufacturer of the set directly to see where I could find it and they assured me that Walmarts “everywhere” carry it. Then I had a great idea. I was about to visit my sister in North Carolina, so I did the same online 50-mile radius search for her address and called all of those stores. Only one of them had it and of course, it was one of the further out locations, but bless my sister, she drove me there to see it. And I really liked the set. It was attractive, reasonably priced, and now I knew, comfortable. After some internal debate over whether I, as a design professional, should have furniture from Walmart, I got out my credit card and went to order the set online to have it delivered to my house. The Walmart website now said, “Out Of Stock”. It. Was. On. Now it was personal. I was not taking no for an answer.

I had to go to Syracuse for work the next day, but the whole ride back I was totally preoccupied with this particular furniture set and what I could do to get it. I got home and did some more online surfing and found a Walmart 1 ½ hours away that had it in stock! I called and asked if they would ship it to me or my local Walmart, but they wouldn’t. Here’s where I may have snapped a bit. I drove up to the airport, walked around the rental car parking lot to see whether Hertz, Avis or Budget had the biggest vehicle on the lot, and walked in and asked to rent that huge SUV for the next few hours. Ironically, I had to drive up through Syracuse, from which I had just come, to get to the store.

Once I arrived, I was relieved to find a display set on the floor. Now I just had to find a new boxed set, which they assured me on the phone they had. I started to panic when I couldn’t find it, but it was impossible to go down one of the aisles because it was completely filled with merchandise. My last hope was that it was there. I found a store clerk willing to scramble down the aisle and that’s where she found the set, in boxes on top of a stack, about 10 feet up. I had to wait 20 minutes while they got everything down and out through the crowded aisle.

The furniture set, and victory, was mine! Two sales clerks helped bring everything out. They got a little snippy when the boxes didn’t fit into the SUV, but after all that I’d been through, that was nothing. I was confident if I took the furniture out of the boxes it would all fit. To my surprise, one of them angrily told me I “wasn’t allowed to do that.” I asked for clarity and was informed I wasn’t allowed to take anything out of a box. Of course I can. It’s mine, I just bought it. Surely he could understand I planned on sitting on the chairs, not sitting on these boxes in the backyard. Then he said I couldn’t use their dumpster for the boxes or packaging. Fair enough, I’ll fold the cardboard flat and take it with me. Then he said couldn’t help me open the boxes. I asked if he could keep an eye on the boxes or help me move them back inside and I’d go buy a box cutter. That’s when the second clerk looked at the first and just said, “Dude.” He whipped out his Swiss Army knife, opened the boxes, loaded the SUV, and took the cardboard and plastic wrappings. My hero.

To go with my lovely tables and chairs, I also bought a 10’ x 10’ x 10’ pergola online. That process couldn’t have been easier, but I did laugh when I was ordering it and a note popped up on the screen saying “Item can not be gift wrapped.”

That all occurred in 2010. Last night I took that patio furniture out of the shed and set it up for the season, and I’m writing this while sitting here, so I guess it was worth it.