Leons Versus The Brick - An Internet Showdown

****  UPDATE AT BOTTOM ****

Note: Re-updated.  Darn you Leon's.  Darn you to heck.

Another note:  Re-re-updated.

Since we have a little bit of wedding present money left to spend, and a brand new rental house to furnish, we've been buying furniture.  Specifically a bedroom set from Leons and a living room set from The Brick.  We have had two radically different experiences that I would like to share with you. 

Leons

Go shopping at the Danforth store.  Have sales person follow us around.  Choose furniture.  Wait half an hour for the order to be processed.  Wait some more while she wandered around doing nothing and trying to make us buy more furniture. 

Day of delivery.  Wait for phone call, never received.  They show up randomly and deliver furniture.  Footboard is smashed all up.  Dresser drawers are uneven and don't close.  Night table is not put together properly.

Call Leons.  Am told someone will come to fix it.  Specifically describe problems and say, `Will the technician be able to take apart the dresser because that is the only way to fix it?". 

Technician comes.  Cannot take apart dresser.  Fill out forms.  Leaves.  Without fixing anything, except a little paint on the night table to hide the fact it was not put together properly.

Another day off work, waiting around.  This is $80 I could desperately use, Leons!  New footboard is fine.  New dresser is dented.  Given $100 off.

Decide that is not acceptable because the dent is really noticeable.  Call Leons.  Offer to send another dresser and let us keep $100 off for the hassle.

Dresser #3 is broken and cannot be taken off the truck it is so severely damaged structurally, good thing I took another day off work.  We had been assured it was in good condition because a manager had checked it.  Right.  Just like every time I call and they don't call me back and I call again and they say, "O I was just looking at your file and was about to call."  Don't patronize me Leons.

Call Leons.  Ask for a fourth dresser.  No problem.  It will all be fine, Jason assures me.  Bed doesn't go together.  Technician will come and fix it.  Bed is apparently always difficult to put together, but we were told it would be easy for us to do ourselves.

Technician comes and fixes bed for us.  Keep counting, this is day five off work.

Night before Leons is supposed to deliver the fourth dresser, I call Leons in Toronto, they are sure it has been double checked by a manager.  They offer to call the store in Burlington and call me back.  Call back, oops, dresser number four is broken too.  Maybe we have to wait until a new shipment in the end of December?  Who knows.  I ask for a further discount.  Am assured that of course there will be one after the dresser is delivered.

Get a call.  Possibly a dresser for us.  They will deliver it.  I ask the Burlington store about a discount, of course we will get one, they understand that we have taken six days off work to wait around for their delivery guys who never call because the one time we had to be out of the house they promised they would call an hour before so we could get back in time and they didn't call until they were already at the house. 

Dresser is delivered.   It is fine.  We take it.

Wait for Leons to call us about discount.

Keep waiting.

Call them.  Manager will call me back. 

Keep waiting.

Call again.  O, what great timing!  They were just going over our file and about to call me back.  They offer me $100.  The original $100.  No discount for the FOUR extra days off work?  I ask how I can get a hold of head office or someone above the store manager.  Apparently everything is handled through store managers and nothing else.  I only want to let someone know about my issues with their quality control.  Nope.  No way.  I explain that I have never heard of a large corporation that doesn't have an organized hierarchy for complaints.  Still nothing.  If you had a problem with my mall store you could speak to the manager, then the store manager, then the district manager, and you could take it all the way up to the head office if you felt so inclined.  Leons has no such hierarchy.

Fine.  We will take the $100 discount.  Well, we can't actually have it because it is illegal for them to store our credit card number.  Canada privacy act or some such thing.  Husband will have to call with his credit card number.  Half an hour later he gets a message saying they had used his credit card number  that was on file to give a refund of the $100.

What the hell Leons?

The Brick

Go to store.  Find couch I had already seen on sale online.  Buy couch.  The entire process (including driving to and from the store) takes under an hour, and we sat on every couch in the entire store!  The sale only took five minutes.  We bought the couches on Thursday, they offered to deliver on Saturday or Sunday (Leons doesn't deliver Sunday). 

Couches are delivered.  Minor problem, missing legs for one of the couches.  Otherwise everything is in great condition, got offered an extended warranty and given protective spray for couches.

Call the Brick.  They offer to have legs shipped to us. 

Everything is fine, our living room is ready to go and less than a week later we are sitting on our couches in our beautiful living room.


I bet you can guess which store is getting my face punch.  No?  I'll give you a hint.... 

It's not the Brick.


**** UPDATE ****

Yesterday (3 whole weeks after I first posted this and then sent it in an email along with the blog link to Leon's to show them that I mean business about hating them), my Husband got a phone call from Leon's.  We stared, confused, at the call display, wondering what awful thing they were calling to tell us now.  Finally I said, "well you might as well answer it".  He answered the phone and I heard him say, "well you can talk to her", and handed the phone to me.  Imagine my shocked surprise to find out they were calling to apologize for their terrible service, and to tell me they had discussed the problem with their supplier AND in the most shocking news off all, they would like to offer us an additional $200 off. 

In conclusion, I felt like I won.  Although on further reflection I feel what I won was a major battle, that will have minor long term reprecussions for them in that we will not shop at there store any more (ever heard of 'too little, too late' Leon's?), but overall they got rid of their crappy furniture and still got the majority of our hard earned money so maybe they were the winners of the war.

I thought I should update you to be fair to Leon's as a company.  If you would like to put in many many weeks of hard work, calling and never being called back, and leaving messages and never being called back, and having multiple dressers delivered and service men come to your house and $30 in long distance charges on your cell phone and waiting three months for a resolution that may never come and being filled with anger and resentment any time you spend more than five minutes in your bedroom - if all of that seems worth $300 off, then by all means, go ahead. 

Hopefully this is the conclusion of this drama.  But who can know what the New Year will hold?!?!

January 2, 2012.  That was obviously not the conclusion.  Today we checked our credit card bill.  We got $100 back.  Not $200.  Why did I ever bother?  Herm said, well you should call and ask.  But o no, not this time.  I am finished with those liars.  I am sorry I ever felt badly for being so mean and ammended this post.  DO NOT SHOP AT LEON'S.  The end.  For real this time.  O I really really hope so....

February 8, 2012.  Weeks after this whole fiasco we got a random $100 credit back.  So weird Leon's.  So weird....  In conclusion, I really don't know what to say.  Upon further review the furniture isn't even that nice.  It scratches easily.  And dust shows very clearly.  And it wasn't worth all of the hassle, or all of these updates.  I stick with my original opinion, skip Leon's. 

Just when I thought I had finally found rock bottom, I find you can always fall a little further. Sometimes, literally.

I felt like I was piecing my life back together, again.  After not getting that job I had decided to move on and stop looking in at the dress I had decided to buy at RW as a celebration dress which I can no longer afford and the adorable ankle boots I was also going to get.  I started packing my lunch instead of eating at the food court on my breaks.  I applied to a few more jobs on Monday.  I visited my family on the weekend.  Yes, I found I could move on, and possibly up.  There was something else out there for me.  Something better even!

Today I headed out to work at the mall.  I was walking because I cannot afford a car on my luxurious salary of under $600/month.  Also, let's be serious, I need the exercise.  I have become extremely inactive, even for an unemployed person.  While walking I thought of a funny story I wanted to tell my littlest sister.  I called her up, but since it had snowed last night and I was freezing I did something a little silly.  I never wear hats, for unknown reasons I hate them, instead I have a cute little headband to keep my ears warm.  I stuck my phone under my headband, thus creating my very own 'hands free' talking!  This is not an attractive look, but it served its purpose and it was early and nobody else was out.  I was zipping along trying to get to the mall when I decided to take a little short cut through a very small patch of grass.  This is where the problems started.  They ended with me dramatically slipping and falling into a mud puddle, screaming at the top of my lungs and grasping for my stupid phone which stayed stuck in my headband.

Please, picture this.  I am covered in mud, showing up to work right on time, but no extra time to go back and get changed.  I cannot afford buy new pants.  I definitely cannot afford to call in sick.  I have no choice.  I show up, pants soaked all the way up my butt, muddy and awful.  Is there really no end to my humiliation?  World, I apologize for whatever I did in a previous lifetime, but I do believe I have suffered enough.  Seriously.  Enough.  I am not sure how much more I can handle. 

In hilarious news, if that isn't enough, when I went to work and explained the story, I finished with, "you know, just in case you were wondering why I showed up looking like such a mess..."  to which a co-worker simply raised an eyebrow and stared me down.  I was forced to reply with an awkward, "well, more of a mess than usual.  *uncomfortable giggle*"

I tried to google various pictures of mud puddles and wearing your cell phone in your headband, but apparently this unique situation has not happened to anybody else, or if it has they have not documented in on the internet.  So, I have taken this opportunity to draw you a visual Paint representation of what happened.  Enjoy.  If you would like a self portrait done please send me your most embarassing moment and I will try to my best to draw it for you.



Yes, I took some liberties and made myself a lot blonder and thinner.  I needed something to brighten my day.



So close, and yet.....

This week has been filled with stories that I have selfishly been keeping to myself.  Let me try to catch you up.  Last weekend I went to my sister's for a belated Thanksgiving (we were celebrating the American version this year).  Our Thanksgivings involve feasting and drunk dialing other family members.  This year proved to be no different and included us shouting at our littlest sister, "Why are you with a man?  We can hear a man with you!"  Once we sobered up she informed us she had been on the bus.  Oops.  Our bad. 

This very same littlest sister, who puts up with so much from us, had sent us a giant bag of hand me downs.  We went through this bag and divided everything up with hardly any fighting.  What we didn't know was that these clothes had magical life saving powers.  That's right, this is not an exageration, it is the real truth.

My middle sister had one of the shirts on and was about to head to work when she looked down and saw a little hole in it.  Being the slobby sister, she was going to go to work anyway.  But she realized as a professional she shouldn't dress like a homeless person (Yes, if you are wondering, I am the older, unsuccessful, jobless sister.  I am happy for her, but even sadder for me).  She went back in to the house and one her drive to work passed by a giant horrible accident that she would have been a part of had she left the house five minutes earlier.  Shirt = life saver (not the candy, stay with me here people, it actually, literally saved her life). 

Then on Wednesday I was going out for dinner with my friends.  I was a little late because I had to stop by my parents house to drop off a very belated birthday present for my Dad.  My Mom was disappointed because her birthday had only been four days ago, so she obviously thought the present was for her.  They had both forgotten I had not got a present for my father this year.  So much for spending time and energy on choosing thoughtful gifts, next year I'm getting them nothing and then when/if they mention it I'm going to pretend I bought them something and they will never know the truth.  Hope you are all looking forward to Christmas!

So, on my drive from their house to dinner I encountered a giant car crash.  Fire trucks were there, but I was there before the police and got to see the tow trucks come to drag away the remains of the cars.  Fortunately I was about 30 cars behind the whole thing and didn't have to see any of the human remains.  I have a weak stomach and seeing blood and gore would have totally ruined my appetite.  As it was I managed to devour 4000 calories of cheesecake when I finally got to my dinner.  While waiting for the accident to clear I texted my middle sister to say that I had also not died this week.  She was happy, and asked if I was wearing one of the 'new' shirts I had acquired.  I was!!!!  Our littlest sister had single handedly saved both of our lives in one week.  Thank you littlest.

Wednesday was also a very happy day because I had a second interview for a job that I would be fantastic at, it was my dream job and would make me the happiest person in all the land.  I felt it went well and was happy I might soon be able to quit this blog and live my life in the real world.

Yesterday, the job called me back with a no.  They reassured me I had done a great job and that was why I had been called back for the second interview, and there had been a lot of discussion about who they should pick.  It just wasn't me.  I kinda believe that because they bothered to call and talk to me.  The job interview I went to before this one had emailed me and said, "We've made our decision.  It's not you".  So this was a little more gentle. 

I mean, let's be real, it doesn't give me anything meaningful to do with the rest of my life, and it means I spent two nights staying awake all night studying the company and wasted pages of paper writing out fake interview questions they might ask, and it doesn't help me pay off my credit card bill and fastly increasing debt, and my electricity might still get shut off, and I am alone and depressed as ever.  And, they never really clearly said I was second place, so I might have been 8th or 42nd, which really isn't very impressive at all.  I didn't get to update my facebook status to, "Finally got a big girl job." like I had been planning on.  I will have to continue biking to my job at the mall that doesn't pay me enough money to even afford fruit.  I may, in fact, be well on my way to scurvy, given that I haven't had fruit in weeks.  Also, I believe my Visa will be reaching it's limit soon, and I doubt they will be increasing it for me since I have been unable to make payments on it.  On a side note - No Frills doesn't even accept Visa, and what kind of scam is that for poor people?  I have to get a mastercard to be able to buy groceries?

I was summarizing my week in my head yesterday.  In between sobbing uncontrollable about what a failure I am at life, and cleaning my house like a maniac because that is how I deal with disappointment.  Here's what I came up with - I spent the beginning of the week intoxicated, and then I didn't die, and now I am in the same unemployed state I was at the end of last week. 

That's right.  The highlight of my week is that I am still alive.  I made it.  Survived this week.  Sometimes, in this awful experience of unemployment, you have to just be grateful for that much and hope for better next week. 

Let me know if you made it through this week.  I'd love to hear your tales of survival.

Face Punching Relieves Stress, Just Like Yoga!

Hello Everybody.  I know it has been a long long while since I posted.  Let me tell you, repainting a house and working part time is exhausting.  I mean, I have spent the last several years without this much activity in my life.  I don't know what to do with myself.  I am so busy all day.  Also, for a moment of complaining (something new and different, I know), retail is hard work.  To everybody who makes a living like this, I am impressed because I couldn't handle it.  My legs and feet hurt from not sitting, my brain hurts from staring at a computer and trying to shelve everything in the right place, my face hurts from constantly smiling.  Sheesh!!

But enough about me.  Here's my face punch.  It is to Lululemon.  There are many many reasons to punch this "Canadian" company who outsources all their labour to China.  But my biggest one is their new ad campaign.  It is causing a rukus from all those new-age hippy, yoga loving, skinny, rich people because they have referenced Ayn Rand on their bags with the "Who is John Galt?" saying.  Please, see here to get a little more perspective. 

If you have not read Atlas Shrugged, I need you to also go read that.  It should take you about 3 days if you have nothing to do but read full time, and are willing to experience this amazing book.  It is one of my all time favourite books.  It is beautiful.  I cannot possibly even begin to analyze or get into the ideologies of this book.  But I will try to briefly tell you what it means to me.  Please understand this is a very long book and I am going to summarize it in 3 sentences.  If you can do it better, by all means add it to the comments.

For me, this book is about a group of elite people who are willing to work very hard and do whatever it takes to rise to the top.  Once they have done this they dominate the economy and support the rest of the world through their brains, hard work, time, energy and effort.  Then, they go on strike.  They leave the world to fend for itself and it falls apart into shambles without them.  My biggest dream, after reading this book, was that I might somehow be included in this group.  They didn't discriminate, you didn't have to be the best in business, it was also people who excelled in art, or music, or even mothering.  You just had to pour your heart and soul and passion into whatever you did.  The idea being that not everybody is equal, and not every body is willing to work hard enough to make it. 

This is not a popular idea.  We have become a lazy generation/world.  We would rather blame someone else, or not bother to do the extra work, or pretend we can't make changes.  What infuriates me about Lulu using my beautiful Atlas Shrugged is that the idea of snobby people not understanding what and who John Galt is, have somehow gotten upset about it for the opposite reason.  I actually feel like the situation could have happened in the novel, if Rand had thought of something so rediculous.  The general public is upset that Ayn Rand is polluting their Lulu, but the real problem is that Lulu has polluted John Galt with its senitmental uninspiring take on what is very important to me.

I have another example - the Occupy movement.  At first I supported it because I thought it was an interested way to make a point.  Then I started to lose interest because if I wanted to make a real statement about capitalism I would have camped out in Queens Park not taken up the only green space in a student/poor neighbourhood.  But, my real problem, was when I was following the twitter feed and they thanked someone for bringing pizza, then it was tweeted that Pizza Hut is the official sponser of Occupy TO.  Yes, that is right.  The Occupy movement had corporate sponsers.  Hmmmm  what is wrong with this picture? 

I have obviously lost all track of where I was going with this.  Mostly I guess what I want to say is, stop Occupying, because I imagine it is hard to conduct a job search and get ready for interviews from a yurt, and Chip Wilson get Atlas off your damn bags!!  The people who understand that the point of your business is to make money already know it, and you are upsetting the rest of them.

Put Your Damn Pants On

I've been in Hamilton almost three weeks now.  I have noticed a lot of nice things about this city.  All the green space, the people who don't seem to be born hating life, a backyard for our puppy so we don't have to have awkward dog park encounters.  These sorts of things.  But there is one big, huge, un-ignorable, fashion faux pas I have seen over and over and over in these parts.

I'm not any sort of fashion expert, BUT I do know this one simple irreversible fact that Hamiltonians do not seem to realize.

PAJAMAS ARE NOT EVER EVER EVER OUTERWEAR.

Zipping to Walmart?  Nope, not appropriate.  Heading out to grab something quick from the grocery store?  Still need to wear pants.  Going to the mall to do Christmas shopping?  Out to the movies?  On a fancy date?  Picking up drive thru McD's?  What do all of these activities have in common?  You cannot wear bedroom attire.  My standards are not high for fashion.  I will put up with tights and too short shirts even though tights are not technically pants.  I can handle sweatpants of all sorts.  Even little dogs in their own crazy cart contraptions used as fashion accessories (photo of 'dabie' provided by this  blog).  These things are all tolerable.  But not pj's. 

O please stop the madness Hamilton.  For me.  My delicate Toronto eyes are not used to such abominations.  In order to properly adjust, ease the culture shock, I am begging you, when you are setting out for the day, and you change your slippers to something with a harder sole, and you brush your teeth (o please be brushing your teeth), and you feel like you are forgetting something, look down and make sure that you are wearing something on your bottom half that is not plaid, or has cute little flannel coffee cups, or sparkles and strips.  Thank you.

Costco - The Super Cheap Way

You all know I am a really big fan of saving money at all times, mostly because I have been living off my Visa and am worried that soon I will reach my limit and then I will have no back up plan for life.  Although, I did have a conversation the other day with some friends at how impossible it is to get a bursary for life.  Really not fair that students get them all.

Last week we borrowed my MIL's Costco card to go on a giant shopping spree.  Today we decided to take advantage of the card and head out in the Sunday afternoon madness to do some shopping.  We grabbed a giant cart and started filling it up - 80 rolls of toilet paper, laundry detergent so heavy I could barely lift it, enough cookies to last me at least 3 days, the usual from a trip to Costco.

We got to the check out and looked in our cart at our goodies and realized we weren't that excited to be spending $300 on large amounts of mundane items.  Sure, they were all things we needed and would eventually use.  Yes, the prices were good, some better even than Walmart.  But, really?  For $300 we could come up with something really fun to do, or at least buy myself the cutest little party dress I've been eyeing at RW. 

They start scanning our items, Husband hands over the card.  They ask for ID.  We fumble for a minute, not sure what to do.  Herm tells them it's his Mom's card, we've used it before, can we do it just this once?

No.  It is a definite no.  No from the cashier.  No from the superviser.  Just no.

Fine.  Feeling surprisingly good about wasting an hour of our lives looking at extra large cans of ketchup and giant bags of chip, we leave.  Leave the full cart for them to unload and walk out into the sunset.  Overall, it felt like a successful trip.  We had the experience, we didn't have to pay anything, and we got home and had nothing to unload from the car. 

Who's coming next week?

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

This is part punch in the face and part confessional.  I have a secret to confess, and after I confess it, it will no longer be a secret.  First, not the secret, I love postsecret.  I read it every Sunday and have for a very long time.  But lately I have noticed some of the things on there are not secrets.  For example: "At our nation's capitol in our national history museum all the souveniers are made in a different country".  This is not a secret.  It is an observation.  Anybody who goes anywhere can look at the stickers on the souveniers and see where they are made.  It is open and common knowledge.  NOT a secret.  I like the life changing dramatic ones, or even the random and revealingly secret ones.  Frank, please, stop posting the secrets of people who aren't creative enough to think of a real secret and who are wasting my time with observations, and not even good ones.

So here's a real secret for you, that is about to become just public knowledge.

Way back in highschool I had a problem.  An addiction you might even say....  Does anybody else remember $3.99 Big Mac Tuesdays?  Every week I would go with my friends and pretend I was just going to get the burger for $1.99 but I would always end up with the entire meal.  Every time.  Every week.  Thousands and thousands of calories wasted.  Did I mention I always super sized?

In order to stop this sad and pathetic addiction I gave up meat.  Extreme?  Yes.  I am a person who almost always deals with extremes.  I could not eat meat and just avoid the temptations of McD's.  So I gave it up.  Then one summer I lived with my sister who doesn't eat meat.  She told me I couldn't eat bacon anymore and she is really healthy and I was/am a little frightened of her so I stopped eating bacon and all other pork products. 

The end of this is that I haven't had meat in my belly for probably five years.  I have been a pseudo vegetarian.  I still eat chicken and fish and seafood but no beef or pork.  Or I used to....

Tonight I made my most delicious pasta.  A mix of alfredo sauce with chipotle and roasted red pepper and garlic and all sorts of delicious things.  But it is supposed to be topped with bacon.  There was bacon for Husband, and tonight there was bacon for me.  I want to say it was gross and awful.  I hated it.  I felt violated by piggy horribleness.

Not true.  I loved it.  LOVED.  It was amazing.  It was delicious.  The salty, porky, dead animal melting on my tongue.  There are no words.  Vegetarians, if you have ever thought or fantasized about this, wondered if you could go back to meat, I tell you yes.  Yes you can.  And it will be incredible.  Amazing.  No words.  I am speechless.  I have to go get more bacon right now in fact.  And then ham, first a ham sandwich then a big juicy slice of ham.  Maybe a burger.  Or a steak.  Smothered in bbq sauce and onions and mushrooms in red wine sauce.  Meatloaf wrapped in bacon.  Doors are flinging open in my life.  Watch out roast beef, here I come!  And then, when I'm good and ready, I will go back to McDonalds and order a Big Mac and let the sauce drip all over my face, dip my super sized fries in ketchup and let some 16 year old refill my Coke.