A Grueling Day

We were up at 4:30am and out the door by 6:30am—a foot of snow on the ground and 10 degrees but the day showed signs of being beautiful which turned out to be.  Sunshine and 55 degrees in Billings. 

First stop was a long awaited haircut and cover up the gray appointment with my favorite hairdresser, Becky.  It was so good to see her and to get caught up on her life happenings for the past 3 months.  While I was getting beautified, Michael went to his favorite store, Harbor Freight.  He then did a little pre refrigerator shopping going to Sears and Home Depot.

When he picked me up we headed to CJ’s and had a great lunch getting ready for the grueling part of the day—refrigerator shopping.  Our first stop was Lowe’s and this is where I began my rant—what in the world has happened to customer service in this country.  We get this kid (and in hindsight, it was totally not his fault in the refrigerator department) who knows absolutely nothing about refrigerators, what they have in stock, nothing---OK, we strike out at Lowe’s for refrigerators but head back to the lighting department to check out grow lights for starting seeds and I needed a black light bulb for my quilting longarm.  Same kid works in the lighting department and this IS his area of expertise—I am in the midst of asking him a question about grow lights, his phone rings, he answers it and walks off!!!!  And so do I, right out of that department!  GEEZ!

OK, on to Best Buy, where we wander around and around in the appliance department—the only person there is on the phone.  I walk over to the customer service guy that is always by the front door at Best Buy and ask him if there is anyone else who can help us—nope, just the guy on the phone, he will be with us shortly.  We wander and wander around and around, a good fifteen minutes have gone by, the guy on the phone hangs up the phone and walks away out of the department and I come uncorked.  I walk back over to the customer service guy, tell him I am ready to buy a refrigerator today and if I don’t get some help right now, I am out of there—well low and behold a manager type person hears me and rushes over to help us.  Finally the real refrigerator guy comes back from doing whatever it was he had to do and is very knowledgeable about his products and we get a refrigerator bought. 

My previous refrigerator was a bottom freezer drawer which I loved but stainless steel which I hated.  Refrigerators have gotten much, much bigger since we built this house and we have an exact fit spot where it must go.  We started out to get the same exact kind but they are bigger now and wouldn’t fit.  I had kind of wanted one of the french door refrigerators but they also wouldn’t fit.  I found this side by side with ice and water in the door that I really liked and it has a painted coating made to look like stainless.  It was a floor model--we got it for about half what we expected to pay for a refrigerator today.  That made all the hassle almost worth it?????

OK, got that all done and then we still had to go to Costco and Wal Mart—it was 3pm!  Everywhere we went today was beyond crowded—Costco was no exception—we have seen less busier days during the Christmas season!  In Costco we bought a small chest freezer for all that garden produce I am going to grow this summer.  We came home with a truck load and here at 9pm have just finally gotten it all unloaded. 

What a day!  A lot of our snow melted today but the skies are cloudy again—hope that doesn’t mean we are getting more snow!  Stopped in Big Timber and picked up Emmi who spent the day with Nat—he really, really enjoys having her and she doesn’t seem to mind.