CAREGIVING: On Wednesday I received a call that the new clothes dryer would be delivered between 3 and 7 pm. The excitement was building. The laundry was building. Kathy’s clothes and bed pads were hanging all over the place trying to dry. Around 4 pm in the afternoon I received another robo-call saying the truck should be there in 20 minutes. I started pacing… I suctioned Kathy and gave her the evening meds. 30 minutes later the doorbell rang. I finished what I was doing and ran downstairs, figuring the dryer was here. I opened the door.
I expected a big truck to be in front of the porch, blocking the sunset. But, there was no truck. And there was no one at the door. Until I looked down to the porch…..
The chicken strutted up to me wondering if it could borrow some corn. There were also three large boxes from Medline. The FedEx guy waved to me and got into his little van. He probably thought he had delivered gifts. He yelled “Enjoy!”
It was a monthly delivery of underwear from Medline. Once again, they sent the wrong size. I called Miguel at NaviCare and he was very apologetic and said he would check into it right away. The doorbell rang again.
This time it really was the dryer (without a chicken escort). I showed them to the laundry room and the first guy disconnected the old dryer. He carried it out himself. It wasn’t graceful, but he managed to wrestle it out and into the truck. His partner was struggling in the middle of the street to remove the new dryer from the pallet it was shipped on. I had to attach the old dryer vent myself. The delivery people are not allowed to attach an old vent when they deliver a new dryer. It covers their corporate butt in case of a fire (And helps them sell a new dryer duct). Eventually I need to replace the stretchy vent with a real duct, but for now it will do.
Then I noticed a little scratch on the front of the dryer and said, “You should give me a discount for that.” He rubbed it to see if he could make the boo-boo better.
“How much do you want?”
“50 bucks?” was my reply.
“That’s a lot of a discount!”
I started to say “OK, $25….”
But he said he was kidding, $50 was fine. “It’s not my money.” It must happen all the time because they had forms all ready. Either Whirlpool or Home Depot will mail me a check.
As they drove away Miguel called back. Medline had made a mistake. The correct briefs would get shipped out right away. I asked again about shipping them back to Medline. But he laughed and said it would be too expensive to ship them back. “You could start selling them on the black market. Or open up a store.”
I spent the next few hours drying clothes. The correct briefs showed up on Friday.
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