Tag Archives: Christmas

A Positive Consumer Story

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My number one pet peeve with the internet is negativity. Whether it’s the various outlets who peddle nothing but the worst or the comments section of just about any blog, the online world is a bastion of the ugliest of human tendencies. For that reason, I’ve been trying harder and harder to bring some type of positivity to the things I write online these days.

(Now don’t worry kids, Uncle Todd is still quite willing and able to tee up the vitriol and sharpen his cynicism when the time comes – I’m not ready to sit around a campfire and sing “Kumbaya” on an eternal loop quite yet. This isn’t to say that positive things can’t be created through a redirection of negative energy, because it can be done. What Uncle Todd is trying to say here is that he wants to be a little more choosy about when he unleashes that stuff, that’s all.)

So, just in time for Christmas, here’s a little holiday cheer coming from a big box store who actually *gasp* took care of their customer.

A few months ago, it was that magical time in every truck owner’s life when they need to splurge on some new tires or risk sliding sideways down Main Street come the first snow. In the span of 24 hours, I went from thinking two tires were needed to realizing all four had to be replaced. Deciding to put our Sam’s Club membership to some use, I brought The White Whale in for some new shoes and bought four brand new Goodyear tires which were on sale and came with a $50 instant rebate. Altogether, it was about $60 more than what I’d been expecting to pay for two tires. Not bad.

Fast forward to Wednesday when Kim brought Moby in for an inspection and found that we had a screw in our back right tire – not just in the tire, but in the sidewall. This is something that I inherited from my Dad – a man who found everything from nails, screws, and bolts (complete with nut) to jigsaw blades jutting out of his tires from time to time. My personal favorite? The allen wrench I saw one fine summer day, which lead to this exchange…

Me: Hey Dad, I think you have an allen wrench stuck in your tire.

Dad (squinting and bending down to take a closer look): No, I think that’s just a bent piece of metal.

Me (pausing for a moment thoughtfully): Isn’t that what an allen wrench is?

Granted, Sam’s does warranty their tires for punctures and repairs, but my experience with large stores has been that you’re more likely to hear Sarah Palin’s gone vegan than to see one of them go our of their way to cover an extenuating circumstance. Needless to say, I wasn’t overconfident when Kim took The Whale in for screw removal surgery and fully expected them to insist it wasn’t covered and we’d be buying a new tire.

Kim called me at work and explained that Sam’s would replace the tire, but they didn’t have the same model in stock. I braced for the impact to our collective wallet. So, she explained, they’re replacing all four tires with a comparable Michelin model that actually is rated for 10,000 more miles than what we had. Huh? I felt like I was learning English as a second language – was I getting this right? Was something lost in translation?

So kudos to Sam’s Club for not only taking care of business like a boss, but also insuring that I’ll be buying tires from them for a very long time.

On The Road Again

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It started out as a temp job.

Five years ago, I was looking for a job to get us through the holidays and applied for a job with FedEx Home Delivery as a temporary driver. Five years later, here I am once again, getting ready for another Christmas season of playing pseudo-Santa and indulging in what have become the smells of the season for me – cardboard and diesel fumes.

One thing I’ve learned is that this type of job isn’t a bad gig for someone such as myself – doesn’t enjoy micromanagement and an elemental disdain of sitting in a cubicle. Once the truck is loaded and out on the road, there’s no boss looking over my shoulder telling me which stop to do next or getting on my case should I stop for a couple minutes to get a coffee. There are rules, of course, but just as long as packages are delivered to their proper location without being damaged, I can run the route backwards for all they care. It also gets me outside and moving. Once had a job working in a warehouse where during the winter, I’d see the sun briefly on my commute in and it’d be dark outside when I left – it was like being a mole with slightly better pay. Driving around by the coast of Maine for most of the day, I get plenty of fresh air and see views homeowners pay several hundred thousand dollars for.

Now, that’s not to say there aren’t bad moments either. Try finding a misplaced package in the back of a delivery van that’s full. And when I say “full”, I don’t mean just the shelves covered – we’re talking floor to ceiling full all the way up to the front seat. The days get cold and windy, there’s rain and snow to deal with, and there’s traffic. You think an hour commute is bad? My entire days at this job are one long commute. There’s the occasional dog that wants to make a chew toy out of my leg. I won’t even get into some of the strange ways people decide to answer their doorbells…

For all the positives and negatives, I’ve come to see the whole thing as a blessing. In the past five years, this job has fed my family during lean times. It’s been full-time and part-time and something in between. I’ve met some good people. Had some fun. So, all things being equal, it’s been a good experience.

That being said, there’s a part of me that’s always hoping I won’t be back the next Christmas. It’s not the work or the pay or anything more than this – since we’ve been married, Kim has had one Christmas where I haven’t been working six days a week through December. That means she’s had one Christmas out of six where I haven’t been tired, achy, and somewhat moody from long hours. She deserves better than that, and now that Kaelin is getting older, I have to say she deserves better than that too.

But that’s next Christmas… This year, I’ll be running up and down driveways, carting around a truck full of boxes (for all the good girls and boys), and driving around town with my passenger side door open and heat cranked. Saves a couple seconds each stop.