Frightful Friday

The new lounge chairs were scheduled for delivery late Friday afternoon. I received a call that they would be here in twenty minutes. I was in the lane waiting for them and they soon arrived but just before, Phyllis called. I had said he could take the car to a job interview and Kosov was with him.

"Andrew, Pearl won't start. What should I do?"

I was puzzled. By this time the delivery had arrived. I said, remember I told you to put the phone number of the Royal Australian Automobile Association into your phone? Yes Andrew. Well call the number to get help. 

The boxes would not fit through the door from the carpark into the building, so the men had to open the boxes to bring the furniture up. No big deal, but Phyllis called again. He needed my RACV membership number and my registration number. He didn't realise that was the car plate number. The rego number should have been enough but I could not drop what I was doing with the delivery. When I had a chance, I found the number and called him, and explained the registration number and gave him my membership number. 

He soon called back and said the RACV would be there in less than an hour, and it wasn't too long before he called back and said the man had arrived, and as I had guessed, Pearl needed a new battery. $400, ka-ching. Phyllis paid for it and I reimbursed him. 

As I was letting the delivery men out, they must have taken a little pity on this old man, and asked if there was somewhere where they could put the boxes. Not removing the packaging was clearly noted on the contract. They squashed the boxes through a door, down stairs and through two more doors and put them in the recycling room in the basement. 

Phyllis called again, the car is fine now and we are just leaving. 

Meanwhile I had to turn huge sturdy boxes into flattened cardboard to go into the cardboard recycling skip bin. I took down a cutting knife but it was too weak. Back upstairs, I found the Stanley knife with a blunt blade and used that. Over thirty minutes later, I had cut up all the boxes and stacked what wouldn't fit into the skip, next to it. This is a proper cutting knife, and I was only slightly tempted to use to cut a vein in my own arm. 

And wow, did I have sweat up. I try to avoid anything that makes me sweat. I also have purple bruises on my arm of the type that anyone who takes blood thinners will know about.

That done, I checked if there was congestion on the West Gate Bridge or wherever as Phyllis wasn't back yet. Sometime later he arrived. 

"Oh Andrew. I missed the freeway exit and had to go through the tunnel."

His convoluted explanation as why he could not use the Power Street exit, the next before the tunnel before the was beyond my understanding. More ka-ching for taking the car through the tolled tunnel.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I had new blinds installed. The company took the old ones away. I also had a quote from the company neighbour HH used for new blinds and its policy was to not take the blinds away. HH used the company and insisted the old blind removal should be part of the deal, and it agreed. 

I am a bad consumer. I should have insisted the old chairs be taken away, along with the packaging. If the company wants the sale, it will oblige, and perhaps charge a bit more. The stress of getting rid of the packaging, and having the old lounge chairs still here is not worth getting a bargain. There will be part two to this post. Jass is most unhappy with the disruption to her life.