Take your 29$ chair and CRAM IT

(For those of you who have already heard this story, feel free to move along.)

I had a Shopping Debacle Weekend. Sometimes I love shopping, like when I am drunk or high on crack or have a fistful of someone else's credit cards. Other times, not so much. Over the weekend I was fresh out of crack, moonshine, and stolen credit cards, so I had to deal. I am in the process of furnishing my little workspace on Yonder Hill, and the lease begins next week, so time is of the essence. I opted to kill all the birds with the stone at a nearby shopping burg we will heretofore reference as The Bitch. To get to the Bitch, it is necessary to get on the freeway, unless you wish to swim in the cold murky waters of the Columbia River. Had I known what the traffic scenario was going to be like, I may have chosen to swim, but I failed to reckon that the 5 would be a parking lot for miles in every direction on a Saturday morning.
I'll skip all the stuff about how the escalator at Target was broken and everyone had to wait 6454387 hours for the elevators. I'll also skip the part about the line of greasy looking white people at the lottery ticket stand. And I'll just omit the stuff about all the MORONS WHO CAN'T USE THEIR TURN SIGNALS and STOP TALKING ON THE PHONE WHILE DRIVING.
Instead, I'll move right along to the part about how I tried to buy a chair at this place called The Office Despot.
I rarely patronize these big box places, mostly because they suck, but also because I believe strongly in supporting the local economy instead of the Haliburton-type economy. Alas, I need a rolling officy-office chair, because I like rolling around at work. And where else do you get one of these chairs? I steeled myself and went on in to the Office Despot. I made my entrance with strength and power! I took stock of the place. A vast sea of unoccupied checkstands greeted me. 70 foot ceilings festooned with fluorescent lights. One or two Office Despot drones strolling about in their navy blue slacks and their light blue oxford shirts. Their eyes were like dark matter. No one said anything to me. Still, I reached for my sidearm.
I found the rolling office chairs about 6 miles from the entrance. There were hundreds, if not thousands of them. On each chair was a small packet of little slips of paper embedded with NSA spy microchips and a barcode. These slips of paper all said this: TAKE THIS TO THE CASHIER. I sat in some chairs. I rolled. I chose one, the simplest, blackest one. The 29$ one. I breathed a sigh of relief and took my little slip of paper, checked the safety on my weapon, and started back on the 6 mile hike to the front of the store.
It took some serious tracking skills, but I was able to locate a cashier who was actually working. She was helping someone else when I arrived, tired and thirsty, from my long trek from the chair section. This person who was being helped was apparently on her once-annual office supply safari, and was being rung up for some 400.00 in paperclips and file folders. I stood quietly for about an hour. When at last it was my turn, I eagerly handed my slip of paper to the 12 year old cashier. Our eyes met. She gave no indication that she knew what to do with the slip of paper I had given her. "I--I wish to purchase this chair! " I blurted, feeling a little sweaty. She picked up the phone and said something like "Davetotheinkstattion!" We stood there in silence while I recited the entire Ferris Bueller's Day Off screenplay in my head.
A young man arrived. There was a brief interaction during which the slip of paper was handed off to him. He sighed, and walked away. The silence was, as they say, deafening, and I was starting to get blisters from the lights. A large, stinking man with a giant box on a handtruck appeared. He gave the 12 year old cashier his credit card, dropped his cigarettes in the floor, and was gone. Hours passed. The young man reappeared, and shook his head. "We are all out of these chairs," he told me. My heart sank. My brain fired off this word: Fuck!
"But," he said, "I can sell you the floor model." I hastily agreed to this, because I wanted so badly to get the hell out of there and also just to have a damn chair and be done with it. Together we walked to where my 29$ chair was parked. As we were about to complete this transaction, a woman approached us. She was an employee of the Office Despot. That much was clear by her uniform.
She had a permed mullet. She had bags under her eyes and the voice of a million cigarettes. She also had horrifying little black hairs growing above her lip. I gasped."You understand," she asserted, "that you will have to pay a five dollar assembly fee."
I felt my brain turning red. I asked her if she was serious that I would have to pay a five dollar assembly fee for a USED chair that I would be buying because they were OUT of a chair that was by all accounts IN STOCK. She told me that "Office Despot has to pay someone to assemble it, so you have to pay an assembly fee."
I wish I would have had something witty to say here. But I was too mad. So I shot her.


If you need a good deal on an office chair, go to the place on 33rd and Sandy. They won't charge you an assembly fee, and they will ask you if you need help out to the car.
Desks Inc
1205 NE 33rd Ave
Portland, OR 97232