musingsponderingsandrants

We have been waiting for our new sofa for weeks…. It feels like decades…maybe eons.

Our new lounge is not currently in use as we have no seating in it.

Soon Middlest is having a sleepover party for his birthday. In order to escape 5 ten year olds- who will no doubt commandeer the TV for Wii playing and DVDs- we would really like our new sofa. So we can retire to our parlour…like large spiders.

Imagine my delight, then, when last week I got a phone call from the shop we ordered from advising that the sofa was in their warehouse and asking me to call to arrange delivery. Well actually they wanted my husband to call to arrange delivery as for some strange reason when we ordered in the shop his name went on the documentation. Some lingering sexist misogyny on the part of the sales person, no doubt.

Anyway they had my phone number and my e mail address because clearly it was I who was going to have to wait in for one of the 7 hour time slots on offer- being as husband works outside the home. So the lady had called my phone number.

I was away at the time but called her back as I had another delivery due from the same store and wanted to try to amalgamate them. Of course this was not possible. The van was already full. So I arranged a different day whilst trying to recall the contents of my diary – which is in calendar form on my kitchen wall and so not accessible from my hotel room in Bristol.

Of course I got back home and realised the date I had booked was not going to work.

So I called back today to move the date.

I spoke to a nice lady. But she was insistent that my husband needed to ring as his name was on the order. Quite often in these situations I give up. And wait five days for my husband to have enough time to call. And then hope he gets the day right.  By which point the delivery date I wanted has filled up with speedier customers.

But today I wasn’t going to stand for it. I have reached the end of my ‘pointless security measures’ tether.

I asked her why she needed to speak to my husband as I was present at the ordering of the sofa. She just re-iterated that as his name was on the order she could only speak to him.

I asked her if the van men would refuse to deliver the sofa to me if my husband was not actually present because he was unable to wait in for the required 7 hours. No they would deliver to me, even though I was ‘not on the order’.

I asked her what possible risk she could possibly be taking in changing a delivery date on a sofa. She wasn’t sure. I assured her that had we wanted to change the delivery address then I would have asked my husband to call (or a man who sounded like, well a man, as she has no idea what my husband sounds like) to confirm as clearly I could see an actual risk in this.

She went away. To presumably take advice from someone higher up.

Whilst waiting I tried to imagine the risks myself. I guess she might be subject to an irate phone call from my husband who was mightily upset that his wife had unilaterally decided to wait in for a sofa for 7 hours on a different date convenient to her.

Or maybe they have experienced pure malice from wives who have deliberately changed delivery dates to scupper World Cup football parties/ Eurovision parties and the like.

Or maybe there really are gangs of badduns out there who steal sofa order details from innocent members of the public, call up pretending to be their wives. And change the date. For kicks? Maybe I am being harsh. Let me think again. I guess a real criminal mastermind could stake out the house, find a seven hour time slot when no householders are ever present, change the delivery time to that slot, pretend to have locked themselves out and persuade the delivery men to put the sofa in a white van. And make off with it. I am sure there are better ways to make a criminal name for yourself.

But really I failed to see any actual concrete risk.

When she came back (you may have gathered it took a while) she too had failed to find a risk, certainly not one worth the bother of turning down Ms Stroppy Cow Customer. She asked me to confirm what the order was for and when I could provide this information in detail (as I WAS THERE WHEN WE ORDERDED) she agreed to change the date.

Sense prevailed.

But I had to get arsey. Which really isn’t me. Well not in person. That’s what this blog is for…