2011 Apple Festival, Hendersonville, NC
The Red Towel Caper
August 25, 2011 By 12 Comments
Could this be one of "THE" red towels?
“You want to return how many towels?” the displeased clerk at Sears asked. I uttered, “27, ”without moving my lips, hoping this would lessen the impact. Apparently this had no effect. She gave me a triple ‘I can’t believe it eye-roll’ before she even looked at the paperwork. I looked around for a chair. I knew I was going to be there awhile; she, however, had not a clue what lay ahead. Now I had to tell her:
- I had already washed them. All of them.
- I purchased them through a sister source: Lands End
- No, I didn’t want another color or a credit. I wanted my money back.
I knew when the chirpy Lands End consultant told me I needed to return my defective batch of RED RUNNING towels to the closest Sears that I was in for trouble.
Thus, the Johnson towel saga begins. A small crowd of onlookers began forming as I described in detail the pink hue everything in my home had taken on since the towels arrived. She suggested I wash them separately the first time. I looked at her as if she just landed from the moon.
I gripped the counter as I explained, “Something is wrong with these towels. After six washings, a river of red continues to stream out of my washing machine. Although I recognize I look like I’m eighteen years old attempting my first batch of laundry, I assure you, I’m quite familiar with the ins and outs of laundry separation.” I caught the eye of a woman in the crowd- she gave me a thumbs up of encouragement. With a renewed sense of purpose, I placed my ‘ace in the hole’ on the counter: my packing slip from Land’s End stating across the bottom:
Customer Service Satisfaction Guaranteed. Period.
As my cheerleaders looked on, she scanned the first item from the packing slip. Nothing. She rescanned. Again. And again. As she is carrying this out, I thought maybe I should get Lands End on my cell phone, you know so they could walk her through this process.
As if she could read my mind, she looked straight at me and said, “This is not going to work.” I looked at her. She looked at me. The crowd shifted. Hey I lived with a cop. I knew to keep quiet; I was not leaving the store with 12 red bath towels, 12 wash cloths and 3 hand towels. I had a vested interest in this chess match.
She caved. With agitation clear in her tone, she called for a supervisor to her kiosk. Out of nowhere she startled me exclaiming, “You know what they’re going to do with these towels, don’t you? They’re going to put them on the clearance table for sale.” I asked simply, “ Are you going to warn customers that they run?” She laughed and looked at me without answering.
Murmurs moved through the crowd in anticipation of my next move. I told myself, if the manager wasn’t there in 5 minutes, I was leaving. I planned to take my red bundle to the post office and ship it to Lands End directly. Damn the cost. I am in “the good years” of my life (isn’t that what they say in the commercials?) I don’t need to spend my day with this woman.
Suddenly, the crowd opened up; the manager walked up to the counter. She did not look happy about the ‘sit-in’ at the kiosk. Her body language screamed this as she tersely asked what the problem was. In less than two minutes, the first towel was scanned and my account was credited. I smiled.
The clerk said, “You mean I have to ring these individually? That’s like 30 items.” The look on the manager’s face sent a chilling wave over the crowd. “Yes, that’s right.” She turned to me, “Mrs. Johnson, I’m so sorry you had so much trouble with these towels. Your account will be credited for the full amount. Please know we always want our customers satisfied.”
To say Miss Priss was seething was well, lower than an understatement. Thirty minutes later, I walked away, with the credit without the red towels.
I do admit I look for the red towels on the clearance table when I go into Sears with LT.
So far, nothing.
You Have To Plug a Crock Pot In?
August 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I think someone forgot something...
I am pretty much good to go as long as I have diet coke, cheddar cheese and whole wheat saltine crackers.* (In a pinch I will go with any type of Saltine cracker: low sodium, regular, salted or unsalted tops.)
You do not even have to be among my closest friends to know I’m not the cook in our home. LT could win awards with his gourmet cuisine. From his melt-in-your-mouth fried shrimp to his finger-lickin’ baby back ribs, his fare leaves you feeling Southern’ stuffed. What he does not like to do is throw a meal together or cut corners. He approaches food preparation as he does Law Enforcement: in a precise, orderly fashion. He insists on getting the special ingredients for the dish, and not settling on what is on hand.
Since I have been unsuccessful in turning LT into a saltine-dinner lover, we had to come up with some time-limited dinner fare. The solution: A crock pot, slow cooker, or whatever you call it. I agreed to step up as a souse chef for LT on crock pot meal days. The first few simmering delights were delightful. LT walked in to a home filled with the aroma of a home cooked meal. Somewhere around the 4th run out of the gate, I forgot to “get the crock pot going” early in the day – which is the selling, and critical part of the meal.
With sticky notes adhered to all non-moving objects, I remembered to get our dinner going the next time. I glowed with pride when he walked in that afternoon. As he loves to share this tale, he speaks of his insatiable hunger after a day filled with “protecting the city.”
Yes, I did, pack the crock pot with dinner. Yes, the crock pot was turned on. The final check point- I did not plug the crock pot in the electrical outlet: there was no power to the bird! The meal had to be pitched. I am not going to eat chicken that sat in a pot for six hours, are you?
LT suggested we get one of those flip signs you see in diners. One side reads OPEN, the other side reads CLOSED. Our sign would read Crock Pot: PLUGGED IN and ON, UNPLUGGED and OFF. I told him one more suggestion such as this and he would need one of his officers to run up here and plug the pot in. Currently, I do not guarantee what is made in the crock pot is edible, but I guarantee damn tee you, it is cooked.
This crock pot tale is not over. Bear with me; you may have seen us in Target last week. We were the couple in the kitchen appliance aisle having a heated discussion about crock pots. Crock pots, you ask? What is there to argue about with crock pots? You throw a chicken, soup and a few celery sticks in a crock pot, turn it on, and plug it in; eight hours later, you have dinner. So what was the deal? Our discussion was about the size of the crock pot.
We came to Target to replace our old small, cracked crock pot. I have to admit I was looking forward to not using a mallet to jam a pot roast in it. Every time I got a good sized pot roast, it reminded me of doing deep knee bends in my jeans to get a little wiggle room. Wiggle room was what I was looking forward to in our new crock pot. LT was looking for a full fledged gymnasium.
Unfortunately, crock pots were on sale at Target. How could a sale ever be bad news? Its bad news when the buyer uses the $4 savings margin as an excuse for purchasing the gymnasium, cafeteria-style, neighborhood-feeding sized crock pot.
As I ran through the rational explanations for not purchasing this gargantuan Crockpot, I see his heels digging in the floor. This is a moment when a wife must make a critical decision. Do I choose this battle? Do I want to continue this discussion? Or, should I give in, move forward, saving energy for a future fork in the road when this win may just be the leverage I need to win that discussion. No- brainer here- hey, I’ll give him a break, maybe he is thinking about having the neighborhood over for chili. I concede. LT’s eyes light up. He carries the box to the check out; it will not fit into a shopping cart.
So overwhelmed with his selection and insistence, I neglected to obtain the signed statement I normally get before he brings an additional kitchen item into our home.
He must find a place to store said item(s).
