The incompetence of people

I'm not going to sugarcoat it; people as a whole are incompetent. Customer service is horrible and if you want to talk with someone on the phone, well good luck to you.

It is 6:54pm EST. Let me explain why this matters. I am waiting for a delivery from Lowe's. Yes, the new playset for my children was to be delivered "this afternoon". In that vein, I waited here ALL AFTERNOON for the delivery. The only time I left my house was to drive 1300 feet to the end of my road to pick up Meg from the bus. And when I picked her up, I promptly turned around and drove home again. Still, no delivery. At 4 pm I tried calling the department at Lowe's that handles our playset, but I had two screeching 16 month olds, one of whom unplugged the phone while I was on hold! At 4:30 I asked my darling husband to make a call for me since I obviously had my hands full. He spoke with the sales manager, who said he'd call the delivery driver and find out the scoop.

We are STILL waiting for someone to call and let us know where the playset is (6:59 pm). Now, this wouldn't be such an enormous issue if the ONE AND ONLY playset installer in all of Lowe's wasn't arriving on our doorstep at 8 am tomorrow to put together said playset. Hard to install something that we don't have in our possession. Doug and I are taking bets about where our playset is. See, we live on a private road that we named ourselves (ok, I had no say in it, but that is totally beside the point). There is another road, in another town, with the SAME NAME (and this is not a common name. It's a sports name. A hockey name. But that's all I can tell you). When we moved here, Time Warner Cable actually sent the cable installer to the street in the OTHER TOWN. Do you know what is on that street, in that town? A HOCKEY RINK! Not a residence. For the love of Pete. So, we fully expect that the lovely people at Lowe's will tell us that when they went to deliver said playset to that other road, lo and behold, there was no house. Hi. I have a PHONE. One that rings and everything. If you are confused, call ME. I will be glad to set you straight. I might even be polite if you call me 7 hours ago to let me know where the playset it. Again, beside the point.

It's now 7:43 pm EST and I have not seen a delivery truck, nor heard a single word from Lowe's. It's taken forever to get the swingset installation scheduled because my awesome parents had Lowe's order an extra long beam so all 4 kids can have swings. And that had to be specially manufactured in Virigina. And shipped by horse and buggy or some load of crap from Lowe's as to why it's taken so long to get it. When I was working as a lawyer and did something wrong, my boss let me have it (he didn't believe in sugarcoating either). I think Lowe's is going to get an earful.