I know this happens to everyone, but some days I just feel like someone’s testing me. And then there’s the really bad times when things happen over a prolonged period of time.
The previous week was interesting. First off, I know I’m behind on the 1935 Tigers diary (and the 1975 diary over at Blade’s site). I hope to get caught up here soon, but between my son’s first birthday party (more on that in a minute) and retrosheet being down, I just haven’t been able to get it done.
How did the party go?? Well, Friday was one of those “testing” days. I got to my wife’s parent’s house at about 3 pm. The tent people (who will remain unnamed for now) were supposed to deliver 80 chairs and 11 tables, as well as a tent, which they were supposed to put up. By 4:30, my wife called, and the woman told her they were behind schedule and they’d be there in about an hour. An hour came and went, and my wife called again only to find out that they went to my our house and not to my inlaws. They tried to talk my wife into delivering the tent on Saturday, but she held fast and the guy finally showed up at around 6:30 or so. And when I say guy, I mean one guy. To put up this big tent and deliver all of the tables and chairs.
The guy was extremely careless, and ended up doing substantial damage to my inlaw’s house. So after putting everything up, the guy wanted me to sign off on the delivery, but the contract included a waiver clause, so I politely said I couldn’t sign it as is, and that they’d need to amend that section in some fashion.
Now here’s where it really gets interesting. The manager (who really manages no one, including himself) called his owner, and I guess they decided to play hard ball. They told me to sign it as is, or they’d take the stuff down. I told the manager to get the owner on the phone, and after being cut off and told the same thing in ultimatum fashion, I told him he was ruining my kid’s first birthday, and explained to him what I wanted done. At this point, the F-bombs were flying out of my mouth, because I had finally lost my patience.
I went back in the house, and the owner eventually showed up and he and his lackey began taking the stuff down. At my wife’s suggestion, I called the police, who arrived promptly and were very professional. I guess the owner decided to transfer the blame on me, and told the police he felt I talked to him a little too harshly, and that he wouldn’t do business with me.
With the police being unable to really do anything (we wanted them there to verify what took place and knew they wouldn’t be able to stop the guy) they left with their tent, tables and chairs. The lawsuit will be filed very soon. Fortunately we were able to find a very helpful company that got us what we needed on very short notice (and I’ll be posting their information when I get home, they were very accomodating and helped us out tremendously).
The party went well. The weather wasn’t great, but it didn’t dampen things at all. So all in all, outside of the events that took place on Friday, I’d say we did pretty well.