Billie and I had a really bad experience with The Brick recently. I wrote the regional VP of The Brick about it a few days ago, but I haven't received a response. Instead of retyping everything, I'll just copy portions of the original message I sent. Sorry for the wall of text:

I bought a 5-piece dinette set from The Brick and had it delivered to my home on March 10th. Upon unpacking, I noticed two of the chairs had significant damage to their backs, so I called the store and they had two replacement chairs delivered to me later in the week. I understand things like this happen from time to time, so it didn't bother me too much.

When I unpacked the replacement chairs, I assembled them both and noticed one of them had a leg that was about half an inch shorter than the others. As a result, you can imagine the chair was unreasonably wobbly. For a second time, I called the store and arranged to have another replacement chair delivered to me.

The replacement chair arrived a couple days later and I unpacked it. Immediately, I noticed the base of the chair was completely cracked. Not just a little fracture, the wood was broken in half. Frustrated now, I called the store a third time to have yet another replacement chair sent to me. This time, I was told that I had to wait significantly longer to receive a replacement, so I decided to drive to the warehouse myself to pick up the replacement. I explained to them that this was the 4th chair that I was returning, and I requested that the chair be assembled at the warehouse by somebody in the staff. I wasn't about to drive home with yet another broken or faulty chair. The man I spoke with (whom I forget the name of) insisted that nobody at the warehouse was able to assemble the chair for me. I politely explained the story to him, how this was the 4th chair I was returning, how it was an incredibly frustrating experience, but he still refused to help. I get it, policy is policy, right? The warehouse staff isn't supposed to assemble furniture, not even a single measly chair, so I was out of luck. Maybe they just didn't have a screwdriver hanging around. Defeated, I looked over the chair the best I could, didn't notice any obvious damage, and drove home with it in my back seat.

I neatly laid out the individual parts of the chair on the floor. Everything seemed to be there. I had all the proper screws, nuts and bolts. Time to assemble. Wait... What's this? Why won't this leg fit properly to the base? OH! It's because the warehouse staff gave me TWO LEFT LEGS.

Again, I called The Brick and explained the situation to them. This time I had them deliver a chair to the store and had them unpack and assemble it for me. A couple days later I was able to go to the store and pick it up.

I had to return five chairs. Five chairs from a dinette set that comes with four. That is worse than Ikea, the company that is known for selling the most mass produced cheap furniture. Something is seriously wrong there, and during the entire experience, I never heard a single "we're sorry" from anybody at the Brick. Even the regional VP who I wrote personally hasn't been able to get back to me.

If you're in the market for new furniture in the future, don't buy from The Brick.

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This morning was the second day in a row that I woke up with a pounding headache. It wasn't as bad Saturday morning, and since I was out of the house for most of the day, I generally felt pretty okay. Billie seemed fine, too, so we didn't think much of it. This morning, though, we both woke up at 10 AM with worse headaches, dizziness, and outside our window were two firetrucks and an ambulance.

Turns out for the past day and a half we were breathing in carbon monoxide. The culprit, a poorly maintained furnace in the building. A lack of CO detectors in the building also meant that a couple people were sent to the hospital with mild CO poisoning. We were all evacuated for roughly 3 hours while the fire department ventilated the building, meanwhile Billie was interviewed by CTV news regarding the whole situation (we don't have cable, so we couldn't watch it).

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Color me surprised. After sending an email to the Tim Hortons website, expressing my frustration with their staff and attaching a photo of my burned bun, I got a call today from the corporate office with an official apology. The lady on the phone was very polite and informed me she would be contacting the specific Tim Hortons that sold me the burned sandwich, and that she will follow up with me in 2-3 business days.

Stay tuned as the story develops.

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When I started my blog, I made a promise not to post any long winded rants, and I don't intend to break that promise today. I just want to share a few stories. Okay I might break it a little.

Just over a year ago I started an Excel sheet called "why i hate tim hortons.xls" where I documented every single screw up that Tim Hortons made while ordering food from any of their locations. Unfortunately, with most things I start, I never really dedicated myself to it and I stopped keeping track of their mistakes. My original plan was to send a copy of it to every nearby Tim Hortons location and one to the corporate offices, letting them know the frequency of screw-ups that they make, and point out that these are just my documented incidents. The number of unreported mistakes would probably be tenfold. I was reminded of this again today when I ordered a toasted chicken club sandwich, and the bun wasn't so much toasted as it was black as coal. It smelled like it was in a fire. It bugs me that somebody there saw it and was like "Yes, this is acceptable as food". I made the effort to return it to their manager informing them that I did not care to eat their bun. I didn't expect anything in return, I just wanted them to have their bun back.

As much as I love living in the 21st century, one of the things that bugs me the most (besides kids these days) is how completely indifferent people are towards mediocrity. It's almost become accepted. I long to live in a time when an establishment would go out of business if they consistently produced shabby products or services. I suppose it still happens with locally owned businesses, but it saddens me that places can create a name for themselves as being below average, yet still thrive. People just accept it.

I pride myself in boycotting places that are consistently poor in service or quality of products. I know it probably doesn't make a huge difference to most places, but at least I know my money isn't going into their managers' pockets. I stopped going to a particular Subway because the staff consistently took 20-30 minutes to make a sandwich when I was the only person in the restaurant. I stopped going to a particular Starbucks because their wonderful barista told me I should speak clearer next time they screw up my order.

Today also marks the day that I begin my campaign of sending one email a day to Microsoft, requesting that they include support for disc number tags in their Zune software. A feature so basic that it should have been included in version 1.0 of their software, but still isn't included in version 3.0. Instead they add a clock and game support. I guess I could play Sudoku while my albums play out of order.

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On my way home from work yesterday I stopped next to somebody who was completely focused on their cellphone. Texting or whatever. I thought it would be funny to honk my horn while the light was still red, in hopes that they would be startled and hit the gas, rear-ending the vehicle in front of them. Sort of an instant reaction to hearing a car horn while their attention is somewhere else, but before realizing the light hadn't turned green yet. The more I thought about doing this, the more it seemed like it would work.

The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I wasn't directly behind them, which would mean the person in front of me would think I was honking at them. Then I thought I could just give some kind of "I'm sorry" hand gesture in that case, but I was stuck thinking of one. There are half a dozen ways to say "hey eff you man" with your hands, but not a single way to say "oh hey my bad". At least not a way that is common enough for me to know about it in the 23 years I have been living and seven years I have been driving. I guess everyone thinks they're always in the right. SILLY HUMANS AMIRITE.

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