So I go to pick up my new water heater yesterday at Lowes. I didn't particularly want one from Lowes or HD but it's the same model sold in appliance stores and I got a better price at Lowes than anyone else would give me. As expected with Lowes this wasn't to be a pleasurable shopping experience. The first thing and what always happens with buying online and doing a local pickup is that they never have the stuff waiting when I go to pick it up. Most often I will go get it myself and drag it to customer service (this tends to really throw them off their game which I'll admit is somewhat entertaining even if irritating). With the water heater I couldn't do this because the one I wanted was on the top shelf sandwiched in with some other boxes and I figured they'd probably throw me out if I grabbed a lift and went after it myself (something I've threatened to do before if they didn't get their asses moving). After a few minutes of searching for someone that wasn't on break to get this thing (they all always seem to go on break just at the moment I need something) they produce this guy that on a good day probably didn't do much in the way of logical thought. Rather than stay at customer service and leave this guy to his own devices I figured I would follow him and 'supervise' this operation.
On the way there I tell him he's going to need a lift. This falls on deaf ears and after studying the situation he decides he's going to need a lift and disappears. A few minutes later another guy shows up clutching a piece of paper and asking if I'm the one needing the water heater. Yep! He also does some studying and decides he needs a lift. So off he goes and returns a few minutes later. This is where the fun really starts.
He positions and then jumps on the lift. Once at the top he sees that he is about 3 inches short of where he needs to be to slide this thing off the shelf onto the lift. Do we come back down and move the lift. Oh hell no! Let's try to put a square peg in a round hole. He's wrestling this tall 200 lb box and trying to squeeze it past other boxes against the side of it. I watch as he is intent on trying to get this thing onto a lift that is blocking what he's trying to do. I mention that just maybe he should come down and move the lift forward a tad to make this easier. He rejects my idea and continues his attempt at something that just ain't gonna happen the way he thinks. We've now wasted about 5 minutes with this nonsense.
His next idea is to tip the box over onto the lift since it won't slide past the rails on the lift. So now he has this heater partially wedged between the other boxes on the shelf and the lift rail laying on it's side. After much maneuvering and molestation of the box he gets the thing laying on it's side after removing the outside safety rail from the lift. Down he comes, catches the next lower shelf with the bottom of the box, tips the heater nearly upside down and almost loses it over the side. He stops, repositions the box and continues down. At the bottom he rolls the box off the lift onto it's top so now it's upside down on the floor. He then starts to pull the box back over on its side and it gets away from him and falls to floor. He grabs the top, sits it upright and says "There ya go".
The fiasco continues from there but what comes out of all of this is I once tried to get a part time job at both Lowes and HD and never got a call back. Could it be that I'm too smart to work at these places?