I started this mess so I guess I’ll be the one to tell you what This paint costs…
I bought 3-different products from Sherwin Williams to paint my Gazebo. I bought a “Can” of Exterior Grade Oil Based Primer and it cost $38.69, I also bought a “Can” of Exterior Grade Acrylic and it costs $65.79.
Now that the Gazebo is finished, I needed to finish the floor and I bought a “GALLON” of Modified-Oil Transparent Wood Stain and it costs $45.14…
Well, I guess like “Paul Harvey,” I’ll tell the rest of the Story…
When we (Wife and Me…) bought the first two items, it came to $104.48 plus 7% tax for a total of $111.80. My wife handed the clerk 6-Twenties and 80 cents in change. The clerk asked what the “pennies” were for (it was 3 Quarters and a Nickel). My wife said she only wanted the bills back. The clerk said, “I don’t know what you want,” and yells back to the folks in the back, “This lady don’t whats her change.”
Another clerk comes out and immediately understood what my wife was doing, but the original clerk then starts complaining, in front of us that nobody taught him to do this…
In spite of the less than friendly clerk’s snide remarks about his training, we paid for the paint, It was then I noticed the “short Gallon” and the other clerk and I were both joking about the short gallon and even remarked about other downsizing, like toilet paper getting shorter, cans of vegetables getting smaller from one pound down to 12-ounce, etc…
But that disgruntled clerk went back and told the manager that I was complaining about the size of the gallon and the manager came out with a “chip on his shoulder” and commenced to lecture me on the “industrial standard.”
All of a sudden, from a joke with one of the employees, I’m getting reamed out for what started out as a light hearted comment…
My wife is telling me that we should just return the paint and go to Lowes… It was then I could decide to get mad or get even and I decided to get even and that is how I became the “Customer from H@##” who wants their paint tinted in the color it comes in…
Or as VOLVO-V70, ASEMaster, and TheWonderful90s feel about it, I became a Jerk!
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
With the Gazebo painted, I needed Wood Stain for the floor and the wife wanted to go to Lowes… But as it turned out, the Sherwin Williams Manger calls me this morning (we have an account there so they have our phone number…) and he said he wanted to apologize for the other day…
With that, I said we needed to do some more shopping and we went up to Sherwin Williams and had a nice tête-à-tête. As it turns out, he had called the regional manager about the events that day and he was read the riot act, thus the apology.
The “chip on his shoulder” was put there by another employee who had just started there and was being taught how to tint paint and he decided on his own to put the paint in the “shaker” and even as he was doing it, both the clerk teaching him and the customer called out to him that the can lid had not been hammered down and he still put the can in and started the shaking. The lid did not blow off as it is clamped top and bottom, but it splashed enough paint to make a mess…
To top that off, he refused to clean up the mess, and quit. The manager swears he said, he did not take this job to work… So the manager and the other employee had to clean up the mess and the customer left rather than get in the middle of this.
They then brought in the disgruntled employee to fill in for the guy who quit and he was not happy to be brought in on his day off and he seemed to be complaining about having to do anything…
All this time we were drinking coffee and hot chocolate from the store’s Keurig coffee maker. He told me he was wrong to take it out on me, a customer, and he was told this quite forcefully by the regional manager.
I apologized too as I egged him on with the tinting issue and we both understand the “industry standard” on “short gallons” that paint that is intended to be tinted is normally shy an ounce to ensure there is room for the tint… and that it is not a standard, but a practice, by some, but not all paint manufacturers. And that paint that is already “colored” is normally sold by the gallon.
I also returned the two paintbrushes that he had thrown in the other day to get me out the door.
I also bought that third Gallon of Oil Wood Stain.
By the way, it would have been cheaper at Lowes, but nowhere the fun nor do they have the Free Hot Chocolate or Hot Coffee…
And for the record, I grew up in the Adirondack Mountains in a log cabin. We bought our lumber directly from the mill so I’ve known the difference between rough cut and dimensioned lumber since Eisenhower was President. And we bought rough cut for two reasons, it was full size and it was cheaper…
Nuff Said…
by buying all of his groceries at a Dollar Store. I showed him that his “bargain” items are frequently smaller than the standard size sold at Supermarkets, and thus are not the bargain that he thinks they are.
