This week’s column deals with the closely related topics of hail  storms, new televisions, and really bad service.  

It all started with a hail storm, which managed to ding up our  car pretty good.  So we set up an appointment with our insurance adjuster.  And to our surprise, we got great service!  No kidding!  They just estimated the damage and wrote us a big fat check.  Half an hour, in and out.   

Since the damage looked minor to me, and the check was substantial,  I talked my long-suffering wife into letting me buy a new TV.  (Really dear, those dings on our car add  character.  In Europe, people pay to have their cars dinged like that!)  Since marriage is all about compromise, I agreed to a 27 inch television instead of the monster 50 inch projection TV I really wanted.  What can I say, I’m a giver. 

This is the part of the story where bad service comes in.  We decided to buy our TV from Wal Mart (their motto: Mom and Pop must DIE!).  The price was right.  The only real problem was getting someone to actually sell us one.  

There is this one television commercial in which an American tourist goes into a trendy French clothing boutique and cannot get waited on by two chatting store clerks.   I must say that snotty French store clerks have nothing on the hairy pimple-faced teenage jerks working at the local Wal Mart store.  But I’m not bitter!   

At first I thought there just weren’t enough clerks on duty to assist us.  Then I noticed a strange phenomenon.  Apparently, Wal Mart clerks travel in packs.  I should have remembered seeing that on the Nature Channel.

Eventually, I was able to separate one of the weaker, slower clerks from a large pack.   I showed him the TV I wanted.  He disappeared, and I spent the next fifteen minutes browsing through Britney Spears CDs.  That’s fifteen minutes of my life I can never get back, but at least now I know all the words to “Baby One More Time.” 

The missing clerk finally showed back up, balancing the huge TV box on top of a shopping cart.  “Here you go”, was all he said before returning to the pack.   This left me with having to navigate the treacherous Wal Mart aisles pushing the cart and saying “excuse me” to people I was apparently running into (I couldn’t really see them, I was just going by yelps of pain). 

I finally made it out of the store,  and survived my trip across the parking lot, which left me with the simple task of loading the TV into my hail-damaged car.  Except it wouldn’t fit.  Not in the trunk.  Not in the back seat.  Not in the front seat.  

I nearly cried.  

I ended up taking the TV out of the box and putting it in the  front seat next to me.   I drove home with my arm draped across it like we were on a date.  I managed to get the television home and set it up without major incident, and I am really loving my new TV.  

Too bad there is nothing on except reruns.

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