This morning Kathleen had to go in to work for a little while. I went and did the grocery shopping but before that I got to go to my FAAAVVVOOORRRIIIITTTEEE store, (please hear Steve Martin Excuuuuuuussseee Me sarcasm there) Home Depot. There is no place I can think of that I feel smaller than a home improvement store. I would actually rather go to the dentist than a Lowe's or a Home Depot. Hell, I would rather have a prostate exam.
When I go into a home improvement store I feel like a total moron. I know absolutely nothing about so called "do it yourself." Now, as you saw a few days ago, I can handle it around the house. I hire someone to fix things. And thankfully, I now have someone who I can hire. But I should be able to go and buy the things that my "handyman" can install or maybe, I can.
So this morning, I went to get a replacement for the timer that runs our laundry room fan. My new handyman guy had pulled it off for me, given me some instructions of how to hook it back up once I had it in hand. So off I went to buy one. Home Depot is in the midst of the recession like no other store I have seen. There were probably four or six employees standing around talking all over the store. Talking to each other. I was one of probably 15 customers in the store.
Now, I have no clue where the timers are so I ask. I am not the kind of person who can't ask directions. I have no problem with that. I was told there on aisle 48 and the guy who told me pointed to the right. Since I was at aisle 4, and he pointed to the right, I started walking. As I approached the other end of the store I got to row 24. That meant that row 48 was in the back of the store so I started walking to the back of the store and back the other way. Got all the way to the other end of the store and there was row 48 was right behind my original row 4.
Then I found the timers but nothing looked remotely like the one I was replacing. I was kind of expecting that since the one I am replacing is 10 years old. So I had to find someone to ask which one they thought would work to replace the one I had.
That meant that I had to walk back to about row 24 where there were six employees standing and talking with each other. After standing patiently while they finished their conversation, one finally noticed me and asked if he could help me. He walked with me back down to the timer aisle and on the way said he knew nothing about timers but would call someone who did. And the guy they call, the expert, he's the one who always does the best job of making me feel small. His entire attitude is an unspoken, "You're a guy. Can't you figure this out yourself?" By that I mean he walked up and looked at me with disdain, looked at my old timer and snorted that "we aren't going to be able to replace this."
But eventually he handed me a new electronic timer and said that it should work. I asked how the small little timer would fill the much larger hole in the wall that had housed the original timer. He said I could buy a plate separately and that they were "down that way," and he pointed off up the aisle. Then walked away shaking his head as if to say, "What an idiot."
Well this idiot (that's me) then spent about 25 minutes trying to find the plate to go over it that he undoubtedly could have found in his sleep in about two seconds. After finding it, finding a new snow shovel I wanted to buy to ward off any future snowstorms, talking to the manager about how much I hate coming to Home Depot I went home to unload the groceries and to try and install the timer.
Before I had unhooked the old timer, I had labeled all the wires with the color of wire they had come off of. There were three of them. Red, black and white. They were connected on the old timer to red, black and white wires. As fun as it sounds, when I opened the new timer it had a red, blue, green and black wire. No white in site and the directions said what to do when you had two or four wires coming out of the wall. I had three.
There you have it folks. I can't feel a lot stupider and smaller than that. I packed everything up in a bag and tomorrow I will call my new handyman guy and pay him $50 to come back and put in my new timer cause maybe he can figure it out. The instructions might as well have been printed in Greek to me.
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