He-Man Makem Fire

Back on Sunday I blogged an aside about how long-time reader (and all-around great guy) Barry S. had let me borrow his lawnmower, noting that it takes a true level of male friendship to do such a thing.

What I didn't mention afterwards that, while finishing up, the cord came loose, got under the lawnmower, and sheared off. A quick check of Sears' website showed that instead of just replace the cord, you have to replace the whole top part of the lawnmower.

Yikes.

So began my five day odyessey of hell with Sears Customer Service.

Sears Customer Service has to be the worst that I've ever dealt with.

The problem was, they shipped the right part, but they sent it with no instructions. Now perhaps this is because few end users do there own repairs anymore, and they figure it's going to a shop where the men working there aren't pasty former Dungeons and Dragons playing, uber-blogging, poli sci professors with a fondness for South American pack animals named "Steve", but rather guys named "Phil" or "Rod" who understand the ontological signifance, hermeneutically speaking, of the "Chevy versus Ford" thing, and would look right at home in ads for beer or trucks or beer trucks that would use the background music of Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.

Frankly, I have no clue (but if you're a regular reader, you know that already).

Anyhoo, the customer service techs bounced me around for about an hour between departments---it's that phone based sense of what it must like to be the ball on a Foozball table. What they kept saying was that they had no information on what to actually do (just info on how to take my money). What made it all worthwhile was the last guy I spoke to cracked---in a very nice tone of voice tried to explain that "We don't know what to do--we're just 'Regular Johns.'"

At that point, I lost it---not in anger, but in tears of joy, paroxysms of glee, explaining to the confused (and hard working, no doubt) customer service tech that in America what he's going for is "Regular Joes", while a "Regular John" is someone who consistently visits prostitutes.

Somehow that didn't register in Bangalore.

The Good News? He-man installed the replacement piece correctly, which required doing my best Apollo 13 "fix the problem, not the blame" mentality. Barry, I'll bring it by this afternoon, along with some really good beer.

Somehow, somewhere, "Pa" Ingalls would be proud.