Adventures in Retail-land

The house we bought is a fixer. We knew that going into the deal. This was the first of many days dedicated to fixin’ on the house. I replaced two electrical outlets, swapped out the stem on a leaky faucet, and cleaned a bunch of wax out of the carpet in the master bedroom. Mrs. Fishpimp peeled wallpaper and spackled two bedrooms – there were so many tack holes in the walls that they now look polka-dotted. Madness. It’s going to be fun to try to replicate the existing texture.

I also took on replacing the garage door mounts. The previous owners replaced the original brackets with perforated pipe strap which was way too flimsy to hold anything as substantial as a garage door in place. I ended up attaching the appropriate hardware with an ‘L’ bracket to a piece of 2x6 I zipped up to the joists. Not too sexy, but solid.

When we wrapped all that up we made for PetSmart to exchange a dog bed. We got one for the dog so he could have a place to sleep other than our new couch. Alas, it was too small. We grabbed the next size up off the rack – the sign on the shelf said $15.99 - $3 more than the medium – and there was a pad inside with a tag that said “this pad included!”. We had been planning on just putting a blanket in the basket, but I doubt he’d have minded lying on a nice pillow! But here’s the rub: they had it mis-slotted. It should have been on a different shelf. We figured that out when it rang up at $45. Here’s where it gets goofy – the basket was $16, and the pad was $18, or $34 together as you may have already calculated. When the Mrs. pointed this out to the manager the conversation went something like this:

“Oh, they’re on promo!”
So the promo price is $11 higher than normal retail? Well, we’ll just buy the basket and pillow separately.
“We’re out of the baskets.
Why don’t you just sell them to us at the regular separate retails?
“Um, I can’t do that, it’s a package deal”
Aren’t you a manager?
“Yes”
But you can’t make that happen?
“No.”
Do you have the number to Petco?

Petco didn’t have the baskets we wanted. In the subsequent rage we broke a cardinal rule of shopping: Don’t go browsing at Costco.

We headed across the parking lot for Chicken Bakes and to get a dog bed (the sister-in-law just got one and it seemed adequate.). Uff da was that ever a costly decision! Nothing like walking into Costco without a list and walking out having spent 10 times what you had projected for! At least we got out of there before we bought the trampoline.

Then back to Home Despot to pick up the supplies I needed to finish the garage door project, total: $0.74. We should have just gone there and called it good. Oh well, at least the dog likes his new bed and I’ve got a new bottle of port to drown my retail-angst in.