Lessons Learned at Lowes

     Our previously enjoyed Bosch dishwasher broke this week. I had been having trouble with buttons sticking, but it was still a surprise when I reached for the door handle and the plastic control surround popped off. The sticking buttons were no longer a problem, they were on the floor. The control panel now looked like Schwarzenegger's Terminator after his face melted off. Each time my handy hubby gorilla taped it back together, the diswasher would send a strange code and refuse to work. C6 must be the code for "I'm a millennial". I resigned myself to living with the Terminator until the upcoming Black Friday sales, but my daughter found the Maytag dishwasher I wanted was in stock and already on pre-Black Friday sale at Lowes. Learning takes time, but we had plenty of that hanging around Lowes. The following are the lessons we learned:

1. Although there were many associates passing by, the one we needed, Bob, was harder to find than Sasquatch.
   
2. It would have been easier to build a dishwasher from a kit than find Bob.
3. It may have been faster to get a job there, train for the appliance department, then find it myself.
   
4. If I ever become homeless and need a place to get out of the weather where no one will notice me hanging around, I will go to Lowes appliance department.
   
5. It would be possible to shoplift major appliances there, provided you stole a hand truck first.
6. Although we had all staked out different appliances, there is a camaraderie that forms between fellow "wait-ers" after spending so much time together. I call it Lowes Syndrome.
   
7. After abandoning the Sasquatch search, my husband took a picture of the Maytag tag to customer service and paid for it, just as if the dishwasher existed in real life and not just the computer. I call that a trust exercise.
8. We went home knowing we may have paid $650 for a phone picture of an appliance tag.
9. In which case, we way overpaid for the 3 year service plan.
   

   Years ago there were television ads about the lonely life of a Maytag repairman, the point being, they don't break. But they did not show how lonely it can be waiting to buy a Maytag. Customers have their breaking points too.