Some things are just stupid

Windows:  Okay, so we have a non-industry standard house.  It's old.  There were no industry standards when it was built, or if there were, the guy who put this house together was not into standards.  As a result, no window or door in this place is of any particular standard size.  The hole was built to fit whatever window they managed to get their hands on.

So, we pull off our siding, and we pull out the old windows, and we measure what size we are going to need. We go on down to the building supply store to order our new windows, and we tell them, SPECIFICALLY what size opening we have, and what size window we need.  Two windows size 30 INCHES x 60 INCHES, and one window 30 INCHES X 48 INCHES.

So, they call, tell my husband that the windows are in.  They close every day at 5 o'clock which is of course, when my husband gets off work every day so he is planning to wait until Saturday to pick them up.  On Friday, I get this weird desire to be helpful, so I offered to go over there and pick up the windows so he can have them here and ready to go Saturday morning and he can just get them put on the house. 

This will teach me to try to be helpful.

I go over there, they load the windows into my car.  I'm no expert as I don't work in this *industry* so as far as I can tell, the receipt says 30 x 60, and the little thing they printed out says 3060.  I figure, must be right.  Right?  Wrong. 

Apparently INDUSTRY STANDARD, is to order these things by writing them 3060, which means 3 feet x 6 feet.  Which is not 30 inches x 60 inches.  Some dilrod entered the data as 3060 rather than the actual size we ordered, so we wound up with windows, WAY too huge.

Am I just daft?  Does it make no sense whatsoever to write up an order in inches when you know that they don't order them that way?  Didn't it cross somebody's tiny little brain somewhere that if you write down 30 x 60 inches, somebody is going to enter that into the ordering computer as 3060 and get the wrong flippin' windows?   Hello?  If you must adhere to the stupid standard of entering things as feet and inches, perhaps (and this is just a bleeping suggestion) when you write up the order, try converting it to the units you are going to be ordering by?

I'd be willing to guess that at the window making factory, they probably convert it back to inches for more specific measuring anyway. 

Add this to the general frustration that we don't actually matter in the grand scheme of customer-dom, because we are just a little guy, replacing 3 windows at a time, not some grand and big spending contractor guy working on a housing development, and we get shuffled to the bottom of the pile anyway. 

So, we've been waiting for a month for these f***ing windows anyway, they ordered the wrong ones, so now we have to wait ANOTHER month for them to order the right ones?

Add to that, we had some plans to have one little camping trip the third week in August, and now we probably won't be able to go because we can't leave town with the house secured merely by plywood over giant holes.

Yeah, I'm miffed. Plus, it ruined my whole evening last night because it ruined my husband's evening last night, which leaves him in a foul mood which washes over me.  But we had pizza, and watched a little Tour last night, which unwound things slightly. 

And I ran to the store and bought me a copy of the Fall 2008 Knitscene (drool, drool, must make everything..), and worked on my Panama Hat until it was past time for bed. 

Hubby is on his way now to return the stupid windows and rant and rave at these people.  I sincerely doubt we'll be ordering more windows from them next year when we get round to the other side of the house.  There just has to be a better place to go.

Blogged with the Flock Browser