Let’s cover a few items on my column to do list that we haven’t managed to get to till now:
How is Menards still in business?
Given their meh prices, the bag-it-yourself dynamic they applied long before automated checkout machines, their persistent lack of staff to help you find things, and the fact it’s in bag-tax-happy Batavia, I generally avoid Menards. The only reason I ever darken their doorway is to purchase replacement fence pickets only they carry.
But alas, since it’s time to start plunking those seeds into the starter trays and my scurrilous Packer fan friend Terry Bermes is a crack gardener, I asked him for a seed starter soil recommendation. And as you might’ve already surmised, the proffered option was only available at Menards. Given Lowe’s frequent free shipping, my first thought was to avoid the store by having it delivered.
Apparently there’s a really good reason Menards waits to sock you with the shipping and handling till the end of the checkout process because that fee was 33 percent more than the item itself – just to ship it just 2.5 miles.
Considering Lowe’s superb post-COVID order-it-online-and-pick-it-up-in-a-locker-at-the-store-entrance gestalt, I abandoned the delivery notion and tried to take advantage of their similar order and pickup option.
But unlike Lowe’s, those bleeps wanted another buck-fifty for the privilege of the sole service desk soul walking all of 15 yards to the product and charging it to my card. Of course, if there was just one customer at said desk when I showed up to pick it up, the transaction would’ve taken ten times longer than simply grabbing the item from the shelf and going through the checkout lane myself.
Which is exactly what I wound up doing.
When you consider the plethora of helpful employees at Geneva’s Home Depot and the ease of pre-order and pick up at the St. Charles Lowes (add Batavia’s bag tax, too) I cannot for the life of me understand how Menards is still in business.
It’s in that very vein that I’ll leave you with the hilarious sage words of comedian Bill Burr from his Let it Go standup special:
You know what the worst things are? Those automated machines. You guys have those out here? You know, those automated checkout machines? Unbelievable! I couldn’t believe it the first time I walked into a supermarket and saw that. I was like, ‘This is ridiculous.’ Here it is, I thought I was a comedian, but evidently I also work at a grocery store. Holy shit, I can’t believe I forgot my apron. God dammit, was I working tonight? I should’ve checked the schedule.
Dude! Do you realize the balls of that? The balls of that! Yeah, I’m gonna have store, you come in, you pick out what you want, you bring it up, you ring it up, you pay me, you put it in a bag and then you get the fuck out of my store.
‘Let’s go people! Step it up. I’m trying to run a business here!’
If you thought Menards was bad…
In one of the worst cases of bad karma EVER, the gentleman who purchased my wife’s former car lost the title before he could register the vehicle. Well, he didn’t exactly lose it. Instead of taking it to the local DMV, he ill-advisedly mailed it to Madison, Wisconsin, instead, and since nothing ever works in our neighbors to the north, their Post Office sent it to Ulan Bator or some other exotic locale.
When he reached out to explain his tragic plight, I would’ve been well within my rights to tell him to pound sand, but then I remembered he lived in Milwaukee which was clearly punishment enough.
The problem was that I’d already reported the vehicle sold to Springfield via the detachable title stub, which kind of muddied the ownership question. So, the question was, could I get a duplicate title for a car I no longer technically owned?
Prior to this errant title incident, I’d foolishly decided to call the Secretary of State’s general help line to determine if the St. Charles DMV-lite facility would take the old license plates we’d accumulated in the basement for recycling purposes.
“How long could the hold possibly be for an abundantly simple question on a non-descript Thursday afternoon,” I thought? Well, now I can tell you it’s exactly 18 minutes and 46 seconds. So, I was looking forward to making the title call just about as much as I look forward to watching Mike Kenyon fall asleep at county board meetings.
As it turns out, I had to fill out the online application – no easy feat – and mail the printed version to Springfield along with 50 bucks because the car is still in our name. (Another wonderful thought.)
Yes! I said, “mail it,” because while you can fill out the form online, our Secretary of State has yet to move into the 90’s by accepting online payment – at least in this regard.
In the process of discussing the possibilities, the nice second SoS phone lady explained that, for a mere $30 more, they could expedite the title replacement process, cutting the processing time from four-to-six weeks to just 3-to-5 days.
When I presented that option to the buyer, he, of course, leapt at it, and foolishly thinking there’d be a simple “expedited” checkbox on the form, I told him that’s what I’d do. But there was no checkbox, nor was there any reference to an expedited option on the form whatsoever.
So, as we speak, I’m barely clinging to my remaining sanity as I’m 15 minutes into another hold holding on my third call to the SoS’s office in the last 1.5 weeks. This begs the eternal Pet Shop Boys question, “What’ve I done to deserve this?”
Alexi! I love your whole DMV appointment thing, but ya gotta do better than this! I’m looking at over an hour of hold time with your office in just nine days when I wouldn’t wait on hold to learn about the Second Coming for more than five minutes.
And having the recorded big black guy repeat “Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line while we assist other customers” every 10 seconds is the kind of nice touch that makes it impossible to focus on anything else while you wait.
No more funny highway signs?
Silly me! I thought gay men were to be the pinnacle of flair and panache, but clearly not when it comes to gay secretaries of transportation. The buzzkill known as Pete Buttigieg just put the kibosh on those funny highway signs, one of the few perks of driving on the Chicago area demolition derby expressways.
You know what I’m talking about, that black and white overhead electronic signage that promote safety measures like:
- I find your lack of seatbelt disturbing.
- Cousin Eddie says Twitter’s full, put the phone away.
- OMG, Are you texting? I can’t even.
- Mom says late’s OK. Dead is not. Obey speed limits.
- Hey Chicago whaddya say? Did u buckle up today?
- Han says Solo down. Obey speed limits.
- Buckling up is always a good goooooooooooooooooooooooal!
- 100 is the temperature, not the speed limit.
- Buckle up, windshields hurt!
And my personal favorite:
- No Texting, No Speeding, No Ketchup.
“We’re competing for folks’ attention just like anyone else,” Jamie Simone, bureau chief of program, project and safety outreach at IDOT said, “The signs get stale after a while and just become part of the background. If we can catch someone’s attention for just a second and let them know there are life-and-death consequences when they’re on the road, that’s what we want to do.”
Exactly! How is that the lunkheads at IDOT figured out that telling folks what to do generally generates a Newtonian equal and opposite reaction. Ah! But if you apply a little humor, you might get a few drivers to chuckle and slow down.
But no! According to the new federal transportation manual, that signage must be “simple, direct, brief, legible and clear,” and Illinois has two years to phase out humorous signs. That begs the Bill Maher question, “When did Democrats become the party of no fun?”
And now life sucks just a little more!
