Customer service

Now, I'm all for shopping local, but not yesterday. The butterfly lady's glasses broke - frames snapped in half, so she needed a new pair. This isn't so bad (except for the cost), because she's been looking for new ones anyway.

So I called the eye doctor, whose office is less than a block from our house. No dice: Their turnaround is seven to 10 days, and that's for a rush job. OK, no big deal. I called one of the dispensing optical places in town, and the guy said that depending on the prescription, they might have the lenses in stock (a couple of hours), or at worst a couple of days.

Two days is too long; two hours is OK. So I asked whether he could check, if I told him her prescription. Nope, I'd have to bring the prescription in for him to see.

Bullshit. The prescription is four god damn numbers, not some inscription in Aramaic. Besides which, I do not like gamesmanship, and he just wanted to get us in the door so we'd be one step closer to buying from his shop. To put it gently, fuck that. And in this small way, fuck Walla Walla, too. Pissants.

So we called a LensCrafters in the metropolitan area about an hour's drive to the west. "No problem," says the lady on the line, "Just read me the prescription and I'll see if we have the lenses in stock."

Indeed they did, and though we paid a pretty penny, she got her glasses, we got an excuse to go shopping and Katy the Newfoundland got a nice ride. I would have been happier, though, with a viable local option, or at the very least, adequate customer service.

What a bore

While at the Home Depot on Saturday (I sometimes wish I still went to the Apartment Depot, which is just a big warehouse full of people standing around saying, "I don't have to fix shit."), I got to thinking.

I wanted a 5/8-inch wood-boring bit, which I found, no sweat. But I didn't want to buy a set of bits, so I had only one choice, an Irwin Speedbor spade bit. Fine, whatever. But this is a far cry from what you'd call a self-respecting store in Japan, where I would have expected at least four or five brands, and probably more.

Sure, the Home Depot could claim it limits choices because it has so many different goods. What rubbish. How would you feel if you went to the grocery store and found only one brand of coffee? I wouldn't go there anymore.

Of course, the Home Depot has killed the alternatives, mostly. But I visited the "local" stores before they went out of business, and they were no great shakes, either. To really have a choice around here, you have to go online.

I made this observation a while back, and a commenter remarked that pretty much anything could be found around here, if you just looked.

Uh-huh.

What he meant is, if you want hand lotion, you can find hand lotion. He didn't mean you can find Kiehl's. At times like this, I do not like living in a small city.