There is a special place in hell for stupid people
I, like every other person on earth, like to complain. But I rarely, if ever, will raise a stink when I am upset about things and want them to change. I can trace this back to high school, when I threw a fit in front of my mother, stomped indignantly down the stairs, missed the last one, and promptly wound up on the floor with my mom looming over me, cracking up, and commenting that I would probably never do that again.
And she was right. Until February 8, 2009.
On that day I bought one of those "fancy" bookcases in a box from Target that you take home, assemble yourself, and then wait for it to disintegrate after it has been exposed to air. Normally, if I'm focused, I can get these things assembled in a few hours. This damn thing was 6 feet tall, and took the better part of a day. When I was halfway through the assembly process, and then entire thing consumed my living room, I realized some of the key pieces were missing.
BOY WAS I PISSED.
I immediately dug through the paperwork to find the manufacturer info and spat off an angry email about how I was none-to-pleased that I had a 6 foot long bookcase lying in pieces in my living room. Several hours later I received a reply asking about a case number. For the next two weeks, every day, I would send an insulting email to the manufacturer, reminding him that it was just fine, please take your time, as I live in a 500 sq. ft apartment and have plenty of room for a bookcase to lie all over the place. Not only did it take up the only available walking space, but the cats had started treating it like their personal little jungle gym and would dart in and out of it, chasing each other, which pissed me off even more.
Somewhere along the way it dawned on me that the emails would always be pacifying, but the parts would never be sent. So I got angry and marched my ass right back to Target, made them open up another box so I could retrieve the five stinky pieces of plastic I need to finally assemble my bookcase.
And then I marched my ass right back home, got out the instructions and realized I never needed the extra parts because I am stupid. Nothing had been omitted from the original box, and had I just flipped a page I would have realized how to put the stupid f*king thing together and wouldn't have wasted TWO WEEKS WALKING AROUND A HALF ASSEMBLED PIECE OF FURNITURE IN MY APARTMENT.
So then, of course, once the beast was correctly assembled and the parts I had kidnapped from Target were sitting on my table, I received a package at work from Taiwan. It was the parts I had been demanding. And then two days later, I received the exact same parts from Malaysia, and a few emails apologizing from the manufacturer for the delay.
So let's recap. I never needed the parts I thought I needed, and have a perfectly assembled bookcase as well as three sets of assembly pieces, and Target has a box of bookcase parts they can't sell because some crazy woman came into their store, bitched a fit, and defiled the order of the universe.
The packages from Taiwan and Malaysia now remain as a constant, humbling reminder, that I am a total tool.