Monday, March 2, 2009

Seriously?! (And some parenthetical comments)

I had a really busy day last Thursday. I did a full day of substituting at the junior high, where I was an English teacher and got to teach about Romeo and Juliet.
Sidenote: I love Shakespeare, and I think that R & J is a fantastic play, if a little over-done and over-studied (why don't more of us read Titus Andronicus in school-oh yeah, it's really really gorey). However, I had forgotten what a dirty little rascal old Will was. As we read/listened on CD to Act I scene i (and I was probably the only one who got it all), I noted again how as the two Capulet servants banter back and forth rather wittily, that they spend most of their jesting on less than savory subjects. Basically they joke around about beating up Montague men and raping montague women. It's fabulous. But again, these ninth graders don't get it. They have no idea what maidenhead means.
Okay, back to the original story. Ben had Parent/Teacher Conferences that night and we had signed up to can beans at the dry pack cannery in Lindon at 5 and then I had to go to a meeting-thingy at 7 down at BYU and then go pick up Ben at about 8:30. So I thought I had a few spare hours between the end of school, 3:00, and canning at 5. I decided to be proactive and take our car in for an oil change (it's probably overdue).
I hauled myself down to Wal-mart and a very nice mechanic-man checked me in. I was the second car in line, and I knew that an oil change shouldn't take that long so I should be fine (I'm sure you see the problem coming). I wandered around Wal-Mart (and I'll admit to looking at baby stuff and wondering what it is that is kicking around inside me). After an hour I headed back over to the auto section. My car hadn't moved. At all.
So I sat down in their little waiting room and watched the end of National Treasure. I like that movie. It's fun. But 40 minutes later, my car still hadn't moved and it was time to go. Additionally, I had noticed sitting there that there didnt' really seem to be any mechanics around, except for the girl who came in with another wally-world employee to get coffee and she complained about the laziness of the current employees. Fantastic. So I found coffee girl and told her that I needed to leave, though I had been waiting for over an hour and a half. She kindly took my name off the list and I left fuming. Clearly I still haven't recovered.
On the upside, canning was really fun and we are now the proud owners of 60ish pounds of black and pinto beans and two cans of hot chocolate mix. And on the radio to the cannery I heard that Autozone is having a deal on their oil changes; I just hope their customer service is better.

5 comments:

  1. I hate going to a different random place I find a coupon for every time I need an oil change. Reading the magazines is fun though. I sympathize with your dealing with the middle schoolers for sure. Good luck getting the car worked on. It's weird the Wally's world people didn't tell you how long it would be or that they would take it without anyone working there.

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  2. We had a similar experience about 6 months ago when ALL 4 tires on our van needed replacing (a bit too prematurely in our opinion, the car was only 2 years old!). We were told it would take about an hour, we had all three kids and it took and hour and 45 minutes, it was lunchtime, you get the picture. But to make matters all the better, they didn't do it right and we're driving along the freeway jiggling all the way! Needless to say I went back and ripped the Managers head off, I've got 2 free oil changes coming to me that I'll use at a different Walmart--think I'd trust them to do my oil change? I think not! The other thing is that the tires at Walmart were only about 5 dollars cheaper than the ones at Sams Club who have much better service. And now we've entered into a long standing tire rotation agreement with them, LOVELY! sorry for the novel, I obviously haven't gotten over it either!

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  3. We HATE Walmart's Auto department! They ALWAYS pull stuff like that! Through a series of problems with them, they ruined our tires and then they told us they wouldn't "Honor" the long wear tire agreement we had (they said that the tire was too worn. Seriously?! Isn't that why we get a wear-and-tear warranty? ********!!! Jerks ;) We are not fans and Adam has sworn we will NEVER go back. Try Les Schwab. We LOVE them ;)

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  4. Summer! I'm so glad you have a blog. You know those people who just just can tell would be great bloggers? You're totally one of them. And plus you're having a baby so it's pretty much required at this point. Hooray!

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  5. I loved your story about teaching Romeo and Juliet. I'm rereading Genesis which I haven't really read in its entirety since high school, and though I'm positive the bible writers had a different intention than Shakespeare, there is still a lot of rape and murder going on that completely escaped me when I was younger.

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