by Buck

June 12, 2008

I don’t believe I have ever told you good folks about the time I nearly went medieval on two delivery guys for a furniture company. 

Listen to my tale.

We bought a new bed from a furniture place in Huntington, West Virginia. I’m fairly certain I paid too much for the damn thing. I’m not one with a good eye for furniture until after I’ve had at least a month to use it. Once it’s broken, I can tell you if it’s a piece of shit—but sitting on a showroom floor I can’t tell the difference in knockoff and cheap imitation. 

I formerly lived by the policy of “you get what you pay for.” There was a time if you were willing to pay a high price—it’s a pretty good bet the product was of superior quality. The furniture industry has become very adept at deception through cheap construction. The improvement in that part of the industry has allowed them to get away with foolishly high prices that are hard to differentiate from true quality craftsmanship. A rule of thumb…you can’t go wrong with Amish workmanship. 

But I digress….two dolts show up at our house with a box truck and say they’re ready to deliver the bed. I told them to proceed and showed them where everything needed to be set up. 

The bed included a headboard which was pretty heavy. One of the jokers was on the truck—the other was on the ground. I was in the house, but had a window open and heard that classic sound of a large piece of wood crashing on concrete—I peered out the window to notice our new, overpriced headboard had been allowed to fall about five feet out of the truck and land square on the pavement. This guy on the ground looked both ways as if to see if anybody caught that—then, not realizing I was hip—picked it up and started toward the house. 

I met him at the door and asked, “Did that thing just fall off the truck?” NOPE! Came the reply. I told him to put it down and started inspecting for defects. There were scratches all over one side—and a HUGE chunk out of the top. I told him I had seen what happened and I didn’t want this particular headboard which was damaged. 

He had the nerve to argue with me about it. His buddy came out and started backing him up. I told him to load that piece of shit back up and get the fuck out of here, or I would be dispersing two on-the-spot ass whippings post-haste. 

When a man of my size makes such a declaration---there’s never much more to be said. It doesn’t matter if I’m bluffing, although in this particular instance, it’s just not worth the risk. A man standing 6-5 and weighing 300-pounds isn’t one to be fucked with in any culture or society—even if it’s a man of Nostrils’ demeanor. 

These guys then said they’d have to call the store manager. We let them use our phone and amazingly they had to look out at the side of the truck to get the number. You have to understand we were not dealing with MIT graduates here, I half expected they’d want us to dial it for them since it wasn’t a rotary phone. 

Anyway, they get the manager on the horn and THEY LIE TO THE BOSS. The guy proceeds to spin a tale about how the thing was all busted up when they arrived, apparently the load “shifted on the way here.” Yeah, right. 

My wife got on the horn with the guy and said she wasn’t sure what had happened, but the headboard was damaged and we wanted another one. He said no problem, it would be taken care of. When she hung up, I told those dumbasses that if they fucked with us I would not only kick their ass, but I would call their boss and tell him they fucking lied and I had seen the whole thing. They brought the second headboard without incident. 

I was amazed they didn’t take an opportunity to case the joint, but feel confident we’d made our home unattractive to invaders with nothing of value in sight. I’d say after I put the fear of God into both—that didn’t hurt either.

Buck out.

The West Virginia Surf Report!