So… Shopping

You’re not going to believe me, but we actually did look around a little bit before settling on a stove – we went to locally-owned businesses and everything. Unfortunately, the faux-antique-y gas range we liked at the appliance store was marked $6000, and I got tired of picking the salesman’s nose out of my nether regions. So our next stop was Home Depot.

At Home Depot, they don’t work on commission. On the one hand, this means they aren’t following you around, sniffing at your pockets, trying to gauge the contents of the billfold that you keep there – on the other, it can also mean you’re pretty much on your own. As if to underscore the fact that they aren’t trying to push things on you, sometimes I think they try to actively not-care.

Hello? Hello? Is there anybody here to help me? Aha, there she is, standing in the pretend-kitchen with her friends in matching orange aprons, telling jokes around the coffee maker like they’re at a cocktail party.

“Excuse me? I wonder if you could tell me more about this $1400 stove, please? As opposed to, say, that $600 jobbie over there?”

“Okay, um. I think I’ve got a brochure around here somewhere.” To her credit, she does not actually roll her eyes. But after ten minutes of standing around like a dork while Johnny wanders and the orange-aprons reconvene their idle chitchat, I am handed the “brochure” and then cease once more to exist.

It’s a one-sheet, black and white. Nothing on it but a fax-quality image of what might be the stove in question, and a bunch of numbers I don’t understand.

The fact is, we want this stove. It has convection (which we’ve not 100% figured out yet), a mini-burner in the middle (convenient for coddling eggs, if I had the patience), a super-boost burner in the front for, say, boiling giant vats of homemade beer (which we haven’t done since we got the thing, but still – that boost also comes in handy for sterilizing jars when making jelly, which we have done; so there). It’s even self-cleaning (though it turns out the cabinets we put in adjacent to it aren’t guaranteed not to self-combust if we turn that feature on).


Okay, in retrospect, maybe living with old Sparky for so long made us a little greedy when it came to What We Needed From Our Stove. But as far as What We Needed From Our Salesclerk, that was simple. It boiled down to this (ha, there’s a little stove-pun for you, get it? ugh):

We didn’t need to be talked into it. Didn’t even really need it much explained. Just wanted to be reassured that there wasn’t any inside information the store employees had that we would wish we’d known before we bought it. Because it was the delivery man who informed me that the washer/dryer he was bringing in tended to barely outlive the warranty. And the dryer has recently taken to honking like a foghorn. Only when it’s running, though. But still.

Johnny finally got someone to talk. (I tell you what: if you can afford one, you really ought to keep a 5’3” Irishman around. They come in super-handy for situations when you need strangers to be nice to you. Like when you’re traveling in Middle Eastern countries, or shopping at Home Depot.) He came away assured that the brand we were buying was a good one, and that it came with a decent warranty. And so it was decided. Though we did, just to be extra-sure, purchase the additional, hundred-dollar, four-year contract offered by Home Depot.

Now hang on. Before you cry sucker – because you know you want to; oh, you are just dying to tell me what a rip-off all those contracts are – may I just remind you who I am?

Yeah. I put that sucker-ass contract in a secure place, where I can find it at short notice and everything. In fact, hang on...

See?




Oh no, wait. That’s the receipt. Hey, apparently the stove was only $1200 – not the $1400 I claimed above. And the warranty was only $90. Cool. But crap, where is the warranty!?

Ah, here it is, all folded up and hiding behind the – hang on. What is the cabinet-installation crap doing in the stove folder? Good thing I found that when I did. Anyway...

See?



So you can rest assured I’ll get my $100 worth – or my $90, rather. In fact, in case anyone out there is still skeptical, I'll jump ahead a bit and tell you this: I’ve already used it.

Twice.



Johnny wants me to run a Very Special Contest on his behalf. We haven't quite figured out the details yet, but we'll be announcing it sometime later on today. So stay tuned...