No more Lowe's

I answered the phone a few minutes ago, hoping it Maria calling to say she was on her way home from work.

No such luck. It was a followup customer satisfaction call from Lowe's about the installation (finally) of our bonus room carpet.

I'll spare you the long version and just say that we ordered carpet on Dec. 1 and 10 weeks later, on the third attempt, got a satisfactory slab of carpet installed. On the two previous attempts, the hapless doofus failed to notice he was putting in defective carpet and, in the process, beat the hell out of our new woodwork and newly painted stairway walls.

The final installation was done by the guy's father, who is more skilled and professional. I like the guy and I'm confident that this would have gone much easier if he had been the installer from the get-go.

So when the Lowe's lady asked me to rate the product and the installer on a 1-7 scale, with 1 being the lowest and 7 the highest, I gave both a 6.

Then she asked, "On a 1-7 scale, how likely are you to use Lowe's home installation services in the future?"

"Is there a zero on this scale, or does it just go down to one?"

"Just one."

"Then put us down as a 'one,'" I said.

Throughout this nightmare, we - Maria, mostly because I was having violent thoughts - had to repeatedly explain to each Lowe's employee we spoke with how to do their job.

They probably think they're doing a great job, and maybe they are by Lowe's standards. I've come to regard the store as a sheltered workshop for red-vested morons.