Let's start the story of the shelves by remembering how my pregnancy was; lots of spewing, lots of exhaustion, passing out here & there, preterm "labour" (contracting but no cervix action) & lots of... lets call them 'hormonal episodes'.
So in April 2016, post wedding & honeymoon these beautiful shelves were the center of my attention. See, Jake & I had spent months tracking down the perfect boxes to house our massive movie collection. Thousands of discs & not much space we decided to put the discs in sleeves, put them in boxes & abracadabra - storage issue fixed. Or not so fixed; our amazing boxes that fit 2 rows of sleeves & hundreds of titles per box, were massive. Too deep for our current bookcases too wide for our display cube shelves. Hunting went the pregnant lady, intent on nesting & having this all sorted before the arrival of Little Miss. Shop after shop turned up nothing, until I stumbled across the perfect shelves, measuring tape out and all. I bought 2 of these massive bastards on the spot - planning for the movie collection to expand as years went on.
Paid in full with delivery date locked in, I couldn't have been more happy with my furniture purchase. Being at work full time, they found it difficult to arrange a delivery date that worked for me, so Mum had offered to come to my house for the delivery & show them where to put the cases. I cleared the space where they could go & waited eagerly - I would come home from work that day and load up my lovely new shelves with the movie boxes & it was going to be amazing.
Said delivery date arrived & no shelves came to my house. I was pretty shattered, I had been pretty excited about this. Now I'm pretty reasonable, totally understand that things can hit the fan for any company & cause them to not be able to fulfill their end of things as planned so I was firm when I called but pretty open to hear "The truck broke down", "Delivery guy was off sick, couldn't get anyone in". I didn't.
Instead I heard: "Oh it didn't come in to the warehouse we'll have to wait for the next shipment."
"So you guys knew it wasn't coming?"
"Yeah, we'll just put the delivery date back a couple of we-" He never finished that sentence.
The poor guy though honestly, he probably dealt with cranky customers on a regular basis. But I don't think he was in any way prepared for a near-hyperventilating hormonal pregnant lady to near rip his ear off from the other end of the phone. We had a short chat about how I had paid upfront & expected to be treated not only as a valued customer but as a person, you know because I had organised and had a day off work because of this delivery - blatant lie but a snapshot of how hopping bloody mad I was at that point.
I got a $50 refund for the inconvenience & a new delivery date.
The week of the new delivery date I got a call from the company (look at that customer service!) to say that they had accidentally been shipped to Adelaide & they would have to postpone the delivery...
2 weeks after that Mum was again at home, ready for the arrival of these beautiful, grandiose shelves. They arrived this time. Mum called me at work to let me know & I remember her sounding a little precarious on the call... She was pissed first of all that one of the guys had dumped the shelves on an electrical cord. She was worried the cord would be damaged from the weight & she couldn't lift it off herself. I told her not to worry, Jake could lift it off when he got home. Then she said the words that shot my anger through the roof: "Um... they've arrived in flat pack"
Pretty sure all of my colleagues & a number of clients heard about the flat pack shelves over the next half an hour. I had plans that night too - I was headed to my Dads for a quick cuppa on my way home from work. By the time I got home it would take me all night to get these shelves up. I had imagined them arriving as they were in the shop & had picked them for this very reason. I was 6 months pregnant at this point & didn't want the fuss of putting very large heavy shelving together. I called the store again & tore off some other poor blokes head. He was a little more of a jerk than the gentleman from the first call & that got right up my nose, so I fought even harder. I got another $50 back...
Pretty spent from my outburst over the phone, I went to Dad's for out cuppa. Dad is a heavy smoker & even if he stopped I think it would take a number of years before the smell to leave his home & the things in it. The smell of smoke was insidious, it clung to my clothes & hair as soon as I entered his house & as always Dad has to have a dig about something, anything & I left his house fuming over I can't even remember what. (Not sure if it was my weight, my tattoos or what that time) I drove my little Yaris Betty through Waterford like a bat out of hell, wanting to get away from Dad & into a shower where I could get this stench off me.
I got home to find flat pack shelves strew across one end of the lounge room. Jake began his usual afternoon routine of cleaning up after & feeding the dogs, getting wash off the line, etc. I looked at my flat pack shelves with distaste & began to vent my anger as I stripped of for a shower. My lovely husband listened & sympathized. He encouraged me to have my shower & relax & we would worry about the shelves another day. I hopped into the shower & turned the faucet - no water came out. Frustration rising I called to Jake who went to the other taps in the house - a trickle from the kitchen tap, otherwise nothing. While Jake organised to call the plumber on our real estate emergency list, I for lack of a more apt description - lost my shit.
6 months pregnant, completely naked & absolutely pissed off I got my spanner, screwdriver & started ripping open those flat pack boxes in the middle of my lounge room. I could have made a ship of sailors blush as the stream of profanities came with every small step of the process. I do believe my husband helped me put the shelves up out of fear & utter shock.. He also had the realisation that he hadn't checked the water main & done this in between building, coming back in like a man who had won a prize, announcing it was a simple fix all along - I do believe the phrase "if looks could kill" came into play here. One full case of shelves & a half later I started to feel not so great. Coming down off an absolute blinding rage I noted that I was indeed completely starkers, cold & lightheaded. Probably a lack of food from spewing up through the day & just generally from growing a tiny human... then spending my evening like a lunatic putting together some extremely heavy furniture. Whatever it was I came to a pretty sudden halt - I had hurt my back in my rage-filled episode & that immediately went to concern for bub. But there was half a case of shelves left. I don't do things by halves. Thankfully Jacob had the sense to call on our wonderful neighbour Paul, who came over & continued the shelf building while I locked myself in the bathroom and cried.
There is a brace that crosses over the back of the shelves which screws tight to create enough tension to stabilise the cases. Jake told me about the broken eyelet for one of these braces as soon as I walked out of the bathroom. The next day I made another call to jerk #2 from the shop. According to him they had "already given me too much money back" & said they could swap the broken shelf for another - which would mean another 2 week wait. NOPE. I asked if he expected me to go through this whole thing again; botched deliveries, flat pack, putting it together for it to be broken! Then he decided he would send me a $50 voucher to use in their store. I told him his store was shit & I wouldn't ever buy a single item from there again. We hung up after that. In truth my brother had already come & welded the cross beam on so there was no way it could break (or come apart) again... we need to find a big-ass trailer for the next time we move...
Also, the book-ends I purchased with my $50 store voucher are divine...
Said delivery date arrived & no shelves came to my house. I was pretty shattered, I had been pretty excited about this. Now I'm pretty reasonable, totally understand that things can hit the fan for any company & cause them to not be able to fulfill their end of things as planned so I was firm when I called but pretty open to hear "The truck broke down", "Delivery guy was off sick, couldn't get anyone in". I didn't.
Instead I heard: "Oh it didn't come in to the warehouse we'll have to wait for the next shipment."
"So you guys knew it wasn't coming?"
"Yeah, we'll just put the delivery date back a couple of we-" He never finished that sentence.
The poor guy though honestly, he probably dealt with cranky customers on a regular basis. But I don't think he was in any way prepared for a near-hyperventilating hormonal pregnant lady to near rip his ear off from the other end of the phone. We had a short chat about how I had paid upfront & expected to be treated not only as a valued customer but as a person, you know because I had organised and had a day off work because of this delivery - blatant lie but a snapshot of how hopping bloody mad I was at that point.
I got a $50 refund for the inconvenience & a new delivery date.
The week of the new delivery date I got a call from the company (look at that customer service!) to say that they had accidentally been shipped to Adelaide & they would have to postpone the delivery...
2 weeks after that Mum was again at home, ready for the arrival of these beautiful, grandiose shelves. They arrived this time. Mum called me at work to let me know & I remember her sounding a little precarious on the call... She was pissed first of all that one of the guys had dumped the shelves on an electrical cord. She was worried the cord would be damaged from the weight & she couldn't lift it off herself. I told her not to worry, Jake could lift it off when he got home. Then she said the words that shot my anger through the roof: "Um... they've arrived in flat pack"
Pretty sure all of my colleagues & a number of clients heard about the flat pack shelves over the next half an hour. I had plans that night too - I was headed to my Dads for a quick cuppa on my way home from work. By the time I got home it would take me all night to get these shelves up. I had imagined them arriving as they were in the shop & had picked them for this very reason. I was 6 months pregnant at this point & didn't want the fuss of putting very large heavy shelving together. I called the store again & tore off some other poor blokes head. He was a little more of a jerk than the gentleman from the first call & that got right up my nose, so I fought even harder. I got another $50 back...
Pretty spent from my outburst over the phone, I went to Dad's for out cuppa. Dad is a heavy smoker & even if he stopped I think it would take a number of years before the smell to leave his home & the things in it. The smell of smoke was insidious, it clung to my clothes & hair as soon as I entered his house & as always Dad has to have a dig about something, anything & I left his house fuming over I can't even remember what. (Not sure if it was my weight, my tattoos or what that time) I drove my little Yaris Betty through Waterford like a bat out of hell, wanting to get away from Dad & into a shower where I could get this stench off me.
I got home to find flat pack shelves strew across one end of the lounge room. Jake began his usual afternoon routine of cleaning up after & feeding the dogs, getting wash off the line, etc. I looked at my flat pack shelves with distaste & began to vent my anger as I stripped of for a shower. My lovely husband listened & sympathized. He encouraged me to have my shower & relax & we would worry about the shelves another day. I hopped into the shower & turned the faucet - no water came out. Frustration rising I called to Jake who went to the other taps in the house - a trickle from the kitchen tap, otherwise nothing. While Jake organised to call the plumber on our real estate emergency list, I for lack of a more apt description - lost my shit.
6 months pregnant, completely naked & absolutely pissed off I got my spanner, screwdriver & started ripping open those flat pack boxes in the middle of my lounge room. I could have made a ship of sailors blush as the stream of profanities came with every small step of the process. I do believe my husband helped me put the shelves up out of fear & utter shock.. He also had the realisation that he hadn't checked the water main & done this in between building, coming back in like a man who had won a prize, announcing it was a simple fix all along - I do believe the phrase "if looks could kill" came into play here. One full case of shelves & a half later I started to feel not so great. Coming down off an absolute blinding rage I noted that I was indeed completely starkers, cold & lightheaded. Probably a lack of food from spewing up through the day & just generally from growing a tiny human... then spending my evening like a lunatic putting together some extremely heavy furniture. Whatever it was I came to a pretty sudden halt - I had hurt my back in my rage-filled episode & that immediately went to concern for bub. But there was half a case of shelves left. I don't do things by halves. Thankfully Jacob had the sense to call on our wonderful neighbour Paul, who came over & continued the shelf building while I locked myself in the bathroom and cried.
There is a brace that crosses over the back of the shelves which screws tight to create enough tension to stabilise the cases. Jake told me about the broken eyelet for one of these braces as soon as I walked out of the bathroom. The next day I made another call to jerk #2 from the shop. According to him they had "already given me too much money back" & said they could swap the broken shelf for another - which would mean another 2 week wait. NOPE. I asked if he expected me to go through this whole thing again; botched deliveries, flat pack, putting it together for it to be broken! Then he decided he would send me a $50 voucher to use in their store. I told him his store was shit & I wouldn't ever buy a single item from there again. We hung up after that. In truth my brother had already come & welded the cross beam on so there was no way it could break (or come apart) again... we need to find a big-ass trailer for the next time we move...
Also, the book-ends I purchased with my $50 store voucher are divine...
