Star Member GReedDiamond (4,776 posts)
I had to go shopping for a new refrigerator... [View all]
All of our food has melted, due to the fact that our current fridge won't get cold enough to do what it's supposed to do. It's still running, it just doesn't get cold.
So last Monday, we went to a few stores, like Best Buy, Lowes and Home Depot, but they had nothing in stock at our budget of $500-600, which is basically rock bottom for a decent sized unit.
So we went to the Sears store in Pasadena, parked behind the store where the Sears auto service bays are, and went to the back entrance - which was locked and gated.
One of the auto service guys showed us how to get in the store from inside the service bay, and when we entered the store, it was like...a Ghost Store. I saw one other customer, and very few employees/floorwalkers* anywhere.
We went to the appliance section, found a fridge that we were interested in, just as a floorwalker approached. We showed him the fridge, he said that he didn't know if they had it in stock, and that he couldn't check, because their nationwide computer system had been down for a week. So they couldn't check inventory, and they could not even take credit or debit card payments, it was cash only.
The floorwalker said that the rumor was that Corporate HQ was trying to create conditions so bad that they would be "forced" to close more stores and let many people go.
We still don't have a refrigerator, and all of our food is now bad or almost there.
*I come from a family in Chicago that, that, back in the late 50s to late 70s, included relatives who worked for Sears, including an aunt who was the personal secretary to the VP of Sears Roebuck, and a couple of my uncles were floorwalkers - that was their job title.
No Word on the Subsequent Trip to Montgomery Ward, Or What They Ate For Lunch at Steak and AleI'm surprised the liberal didn't call some union monkey to come scrape the barnacles off the coils of their existing Norge so it starts working again. That said, let me understand: with the infinity of places in the LA area where someone can find a fridge, including CRAIGSLIST (where you can probably trade the contents of your bong for a Kenmore),
they go to the one place completely unlikely to have anything at all.Jeez, I know when I go shopping for a major appliance, I prefer to have an auto mechanic guide me through a service entrance to the showroom. Nothing says "Hi, we are are here to serve you with a wide selection" more than needing to be shown in through a side door.
Dumb is as dumb does, I guess. Then it turns into a lament that the world didn't stop turning in the glorious world of 1970's Chicago, where the avocado or piss-colored fridges were sold by apes in polyester shirts who stank of Pall Malls and looked like Elliott Gould. Oy.
