I was once given about thirty dollars of pipe by a Home Desperate manager.


I went in and bought four, ten-foot lengths of pipe for pipe clamps, had
them cut into three pieces (2, 3 and 5-feet long), and threaded on both ends
of all the peices. They give you one threading for free, and charge for any
more. The drone in plumbing didn't know how to write up the ticket for the
extra cuts and threading, so we walked up front to talk to someone else, who
also had no clue. They called another cluless droid, who called another,
who called another, who called another... ...over the course of twenty
minutes every droid in the store had come up and tried something but none of
their somethings had worked. Finally the manager came up front to see what
all the calls were about. He tried a couple of things, neither of which
worked. Finally he looked over at me and asked, "How long have you been
standing here while we have been trying to figure this out?"

When I told him it was pushing a half hour, he told me he was sorry for my
inconveniance, and to take the pipe and leave. I was back in the store a
week later, and there were prices and codes for the extra cut and thread
fees posted next to the machines.

I thought about writing a letter to corporate, to let them know how much I
appreciated being treated right, but thought better of it. I figure they
would probably fire him for it.