Tuesday 8 April 2014

And we have a door!

Well, I kinda gave away the punch line in the title, but here's the rest of the story.

Taryn had an allergy shot today, so it was back to town with us. Bob thought he'd be smart and look at the Lowe's in Rogers, since we hadn't been there yet. On the way we stopped at a small independent construction store, and they had some possibilities, but the one we liked best was a $650, and it wasn't perfect. So we went on north to Lowe's of Rogers. They didn't have anything new, but did have a few "rejects" that all opened the wrong way.

Next stop was Krispy Kreme, even though they didn't have the "Hot" light on (they didn't last time, either. We need to find out when they normally do). They also didn't have the mocha filled doughnuts, either. AND, though half of us wanted Kreme filled and half wanted custard filled (and she took them off the appropriate shelf) they were all custard filled. Grrrrr.

While there we looked over the door catalog from the little store and decided to go to Home Depot of Rogers. At Home Depot they had the same basic display as at the one in Fayetteville, but on the "reject" shelf they had a door that looked promising. So I flagged the cheerful young man to look up the price (it didn't have a price tag). He scanned it with his phone, and it came up blank. He got his co-worker's phone, and it didn't find it either. He tried the item number, and the search feature, and kept coming up empty. So I got MY phone out and scanned it with Google goggles (an app I have), and it found it on some shopping website as a Home Depot product "out of stock in 29 stores near you." It showed a price of $249. He looked at my phone and said that would do, and went to get us a cart. We had a winner! He helped us get it on the cart, and cut off the plastic wrapper.

We took the door up front and went to look at paint. After much deliberation we picked a sunny blue paint, then the right base for it, and went to wait at the paint counter while the employees there showed their lack of sequential thinking. We puttered a little more and went to check out.

The only lanes open were "self checkout" lanes with no scanner "guns." hahaha. The attendant had a scanner, so rang up the paint (was supposed to be $5 off and wasn't, but I didn't quibble), and went to scan the door when she noticed a "will call" sticker - meaning it was ordered and on hold for someone else. Oh, no! I explained it was wrapped in plastic so we hadn't seen the sticker before, and then looked at it - it was dated January. Well, she paged the door worker who'd helped us, but he was busy. So she called customer service, and they didn't help.  So she helped another customer, and then the guy called her back. She said the door has a sticker on it, and he said it was okay. So she shrugged and scanned it. But the bar code registered as invalid. She tried again. She paged the guy again. He called back again. He told her to just ring it up as a clearance item, and cost of $278. It had been awhile, I guess he forgot it was supposed to be $249, but it was still cheaper than just about any entry door we'd looked at, and we did like it, so we didn't say anything. She apologized for it taking so long and thanked us for being patient. And "Bob's your uncle," we were done!

Then the older girls and I went into Target while Bob rested in the van with the little ones. We hit some of the advertised sales, and got some chips. The shopping done, we went looking for a restaurant. Somehow we decided to check out the Rib Crib in Springdale. I got a menu from their website, but it didn't have prices, so Bob and I went in to see. I glanced over the menu, noticing the $11-18 price range and no kid's menu. Then a server came up and Bob asked about a kids menu while he asked if we needed a table for two. Prices there were $4-6. hmmm. I asked if there were any specials today, and he said "kids eat free." He verified there were no disclaimers. We called in the gang. We finally all decided on our food, but the burgers on the adult menu come with two patties, so Taryn asked if she could just get one patty, and he said sure. He also offered to mix Sprite and HiC for the boys' drinks. It was a little slow as they were short handed, but we needed the time to rest and relax. The food wasn't the best ever, but it was on the good side of the scale, and the portions were generous. When it came time for the kids' free ice cream the waiter informed Taryn that since she wanted a small burger, he'd rung it up as a child's plate, so she got ice cream, too! Then he came out with (in his words) "the longest, cheapest ticket I've ever seen." $23.50. For 10 people to eat, with soda and ice cream! Most of us had ribs, and there was some left over after we were all full. Unbelievable. We will be back soon, I'm sure.

Just two stops on the way home, for butter at Braum's and milk at Harp's grocery (and fuel while I was in the store). Phew! Home by 9pm. Achievement tests tomorrow morning...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad you got your door and a cheap meal! mums

Wil said...

That meal price is amazing, coming out to less than $3 a person... I'm going to guess they lost money on that somewhere, but good for you.

We still haven't had our kids in a "real" restaurant -- before Benjamin, Rebecca has been with us to a few, but we never had to pay for her (she would eat before/after or have something we brought with us for her). And other things, she's been free in the past. Not looking forward to paying even "kids" prices for stuff in the future -- zoo, plane tickets, theaters, etc...

(Already bought our tickets for this summer's plane trips, and adding Rebecca to the price is eye-opening.)

Wil said...

Sorry, I had a smiley face after "good for you"; not sure where it went. :-)