Weddings

I see it's been a week since I posted to my poor neglected blog. My step-daughter got married on Saturday, so I was little busy last week making sure me and hubby and our two girls would be dressed appropriately. As for me, after visiting almost every woman's clothing store in northern IL, I ended up wearing the first dress I bought. Could have saved myself a lot of time and aggravation, but at least now I know there is nothing out there in retail land that looks good on me, hmph!

So back to the wedding. It was lovely. Raina (my step-daughter) had originally planned on having a large, elaborate wedding this December. It was becoming a much larger event than she had hoped for, so early last spring they (her and her fiance, Erik) decided to make it a "family and close friends event only" and moved it to Erik's family's home and moved it up to July. I think there were probably 40 people total in attendance, including the entire bridal party. It was still very elegant and formal and everyone seemed to have a nice time.

Here's a picture of the lovebirds:



I never had a wedding. I moved out of my parents home and eventually in with my boyfriend (now hubby). Then I got pregnant, LOL. When you do things backwards, a big wedding is a bit redundant. John and I got married at the courthouse in March, and we had a backyard pig roast reception in August. When I look back, a wedding would have been nice, but with age comes wisdom and it really is an awful lot of money to spend on a party. We spent an awful lot of money just going to Raina's wedding. She wanted us in pictures, plus her dad had to walk her down the aisle, so we spent a pretty penny making sure we'd all look up to snuff.

My sister had a big wedding. My parents were paying for it so they got to call the shots. It was nice, about 100 people, at a country club. I do remember it being a lot of fun. But a few years later I remember my sister saying she wished she had been given money for a down-payment on a house instead of a wedding. The novelty wears off. Yes, you have nice pictures, but she says she barely remembers the day, having to run around and talk to people and thanking them for coming, and making sure everything was done properly.

I'm not dissing weddings. If someone has the money, go for it. Weddings can be a lot of fun and certainly special to the couple involved. But I don't think people should go into hock to give their kids a wedding. And given the choice, I think kids nowadays should think realistically, what is more important, a big wedding or a place to live? Just a few weeks ago my youngest and I were out running errands and we saw this girl on the side of the road with a sign that said: "Car Wash, Help Us Pay For Our Wedding". If you need to hold a car wash to pay for your wedding, maybe you should just go to the courthouse. (They actually made it into our local paper.)

John and I have two other daughters, so obviously the wedding thing will come up for us again. We got lucky this time, Raina and her fiance wanted to pay for their own wedding. I think my own girls are a bit more relaxed about the wedding thing. Neither is really a girlie girl and they don't have romantic notions of a prince charming and a fairy tale wedding. I was talking with my youngest about her dad having to wear a fancy suit to Raina's wedding and how he wished he could wear a Hawaiian shirt. That's our kind of wedding. Catherine said we could wear Hawaiian shirts to her wedding : )

In my dreams, one day before we die, my hubby and I will renew our vows on a beach somewhere. He can wear one of those Miami style suits, a white cotton, breezy suit with a Hawaiian shirt underneath, and I can find some kind of flowy summer dress, and we can both be barefoot. Maybe our kids will be there, maybe some grand kids. We could go out and eat lobster afterwards. That's my kind of wedding.

One look
One smile
One touch
One embrace
One kiss
One love
Two people
Two minds
Two souls
Two destinies
One road
One journey
One ending
Together.

- Melissa Higgins -

Customer Service

It seems customer service has gone the way of the dinosaur.

Today was my step-daughter's (Raina) bridal shower. She registered at Bed, Bath and Beyond as well as on Amazon (who knew they had a bridal registry?) Anyway, her Amazon list looked like a Christmas wish list, things like laptops and Ipods and all other manner of non-wedding type gifts. So I opted for BB & B.

Last week, one week before the shower I went into the BB & B store and asked for a print out of her registry. After it printed the sales girl said she wanted to explain to me how their registry worked. It has columns showing the item wanted by dept, gives the UPC code, tells whether it has already been purchased, and lastly whether it is available on the floor or it says "see associate". The young sales girl tells me that "see associate" means it's not on the floor, but they have it in stock in the back. So I took the print out home (it was 13 pages) to read over and discuss with my husband which gift we should buy his daughter. We narrowed it down to a very nice toaster oven or some of her dish place settings. But I decided we should wait a week and see what everyone else got her and then go in and get something not yet chosen. So we waited until last evening, the day before the shower. (Stupid me!)

We arrive at our local BB & B around 6pm last night. We'd had a busy day, otherwise we would have gone earlier. I go back up to the service desk for a new print out of the registry so we can see what may have been purchased in the last week. Again, as I am being handed the print out the young sales girl tells me that "see associate" means they probably have it in the back, so if we want something that says "see associate" just find one of them.

(disclaimer: I say "young" sales girls because they were young. And clueless! Not that young necessarily means clueless, but in this instance it applies!)

As I look over the list I realize very little of what Raina wants is "available", most of it says "see associate". So I find one of these "associates" a male this time. I tell him I would like him to get this specific toaster oven out of the back. He tells me they do not have this toaster oven in the back. He then proceeds to tell me that they don't have anything in stock that says "see associate". What? I tell him that the chicks up front told me that "see associate" means that if I see one of you, you will get the item for me. "Yea" he says "I don't know why they tell people that, they know we don't have those items. WTF!?!?!?!?!!?!?

So I march back up front to the young women who are apparently running things (poorly) and I say "Why did you just tell me that "see associate" means you have the items in the back when you don't?" "Well," she says, "We do have the item, we just have to order it for you". Hello? Did I just enter the twilight zone? Am I being punk'd? Do we not understand the difference between telling someone you have something in the back of the store or ordering something from somewhere else? So I lost it. Yes there were other customers around as my voice got louder and I said "My step-daughters shower is tomorrow. I waited because last week when I was in here one of your "associates" told me that you had this stuff in the back, that not everything listed was on the sales floor. When I got here 15 mins ago again I was told that "see associate" meant you would get something from the back, why in the world are you telling people that instead of telling them you need to order this stuff?" "Well, we do have the items, we just need to order them for you". What are these chicks, robots? Stepford wives? Sales "associates" from hell? Am I speaking French? Do they not understand what I am saying?

So I tell the sales girls (there are two now at the desk) "If you had told me last week that I needed to order the "see associate" items, I would have ordered them last week. The shower is TOMORROW! I can't order them now!" One of the girls then proceeds to tell me "Well I can call another store and see if you can pick it up there". Yes, it is now 6:30 on a Saturday night, I have been running around all day, and I really want to drive all over northern IL looking for a toaster oven. So she proceeds to get on the computer to look up the toaster oven. "It seems that we don't carry the toaster oven in any of our stores, it's an order only item". If I'd had a gun I just might have shot myself. Hello! Why not just print that on the registry sheet? This item must be ordered. How hard would it be to print that on the sheet? Who runs this place, smurfs? So obviously there is no way I am getting the toaster oven by tomorrow. So then she checks on her dishes. Seems the closest store is Downers Grove, a good hour away. I'm just not up for it at this point. I tell the sales girl I have no idea what we are going to do now, I am going to find my husband (who smartly hid away in the store while I stormed the service desk.)

So after realizing that there aren't' any "good" gifts we can get Raina, all the cool stuff like her dishes, her silverware, her glassware, the toaster oven I really wanted to get her, all have to be ordered or are in other stores, we opt to buy all her little stuff. Dish towels, flexible cutting mats, glass measuring cups, acrylic canisters, etc. We pretty much bought her all of her kitchen basics, the $3-10 stuff. And we bought $125 worth of piddly shit. 2 big boxes and and one gift bag full of little kitchen stuff. Not what I wanted to buy her, but what could I do? I didn't want to get her a gift card, I wanted her to have stuff to open. I didn't even really want to give BB & B my money after all that, but I had to get her a present.

After collecting all the little stuff for Raina's gift I had to go back up to the service desk to pay and so they could wrap it. Free service I was definitely going to take advantage of at this point. I again say to the girl while up there "I still don't understand why you just don't tell people up front that the "see associate" items have to be ordered. Why don't you tell people that?" "We aren't supposed to" she says. "Why not" (why the HELL NOT I wanted to say) "I'm not sure" she says. OMG! Here are people who don't know how to think. If you get hired for a job and someone tells you to tell people something that isn't true, wouldn't you question it? Is it some corporate policy to get people in the store and stuck like I was, and force them to buy things they don't want? I still would have bought stuff with them had I known I needed to order ahead of time. They didn't have to force me into buying a bunch of crap.

The shower itself was very nice btw. But it was interesting when I spoke with a few of Raina's friends, they too had problems with BB & B and the "see associate" listing on the registry. Many of her friends also tried to get items a few days in advance of the shower only to also discover the item or items they wanted weren't in stock but needed to be ordered. Raina herself told us she chose her registry items online. She never went into a store and picked out items. So she had no idea that most of her choices weren't available in the BB & B stores. If only the registry had told all of us "this item needs to be ordered" instead of "see associate" how much simpler and more pleasant our shopping experiences would have been.

In the end all BB & B has done is make me not want to shop there again. And I am also sending a letter to corporate to ask what the heck is going on with the registry. How about a little truth in advertising? If the item isn't in the damn store, tell us the item isn't in the damn store.

I think in the future I'll just sick with cash!