Okay, enough of the boring dirt and concrete, already...
Meanwhile, back at the 'fittings selection branch', we had to pick our lighting... gee, it was painful...
After three attempts with our 'referred' (as opposed to 'preferred' for reasons which will soon become obvious) supplier (I won't mention names), the horrible little man finally attended to us... The first time we went in, they hadn't returned our calls to confirm our appointment, so we just turned up as we were 'in the area', and while there wasn't another customer in the place, they told us to come back when we had an appointment! The guy was a rude little shit who seemed annoyed we'd ruined his Saturday morning by coming into his workplace and didn't really seem interested in dealing with customers... My 'first impression' was that he should reconsider his choice of career in retail - er, where customer service rates pretty high!
When we asked a question, he said it was his first week, 'but I've had 20 years' experience in lighting'. Whatever, mate, if you need to flash your credentials at me, then they're obviously not apparent...
Next visit (bearing in mind, this isn't 'just down the road' - it's a half hour drive, early on a Saturday am!), we got there and the bastards didn't have our electrical plans! Our builder had emailed them through, but noooooo, same lazy shit (that I was getting less and less fond of), couldn't be arsed finding them... Another guy there was reasonably helpful/cheerful and when I asked if we could use their computer to download them from our email account, he said we could try. The other lazy little shit looked at us like we were ruining his morning again as if he'd rather be at home playing computer games eating Burger King... You know the 'type'! Their system didn't permit gmail, so we were out of luck... Grrr... So we made ANOTHER appointment... Another early Saturday morning drive...
Third time 'lucky', we were delayed slightly (15mins?) by our bathroom fitting appointment beforehand. We get there and on apologising for being 'a bit' late, FLS (fat lazy shit) says, 'yeah, well, it was meant to be 8.30'. Charming. Way to treat your customer! It was actually 10.30 as our previous appointment was 8.30, and as I said, we were about 15 mins late... Sheesus...
I'd already mentioned to Paul in the car that I was probably going to want to throw something at this eejit or spear him with a fluoro, but said I'd just play 'the silent partner' this week and bite my tongue... So the delightful beast finally treated us as 'customers' and took us through our extensive list, sharing his OPINION, I mean, '20 years' experience', about what we should/shouldn't select, beginning each sentence with, 'In my personal opinion...' *NB, I really HATE it when someone says that. ie if 'you're' saying it, then clearly it is YOUR opinion... and therefore it is personal. Idiot.
Hanyways... I bit my tongue, acted so unresponsive to his repulsiveness that Pauly thought I genuinely didn't care what we picked... it wasn't that; I commented on stuff I 'really' had an opinion on and went with consensus where I didn't. I was just being careful with my words - a rarity for my usual verbose and opinionated self, but I just wanted this to be as painless as possible... AND, I knew if I didn't, I may end up punching/piercing the FLS.
We got there in the end. Mind you, while we were making a few last decisions, bozohead buggered off to see other customers and took forever to come back and finalise our order. By this point, I went and sat in the car... again, to minimise the potential to cause personal harm...
Pauly thought I was being a little harsh on the FLS, but now that it's, oooh, about a month since we were out there and the FLS still hasn't sent our quote through, Pauly is now on my side about his 'customer service' skills... and said, 'uck him, we should just go elsewhere.'
In the meantime, we checked out
Beacon Lighting just out of curiosity/comparison (as the other place didn't seem to have an extensive range), who delivered excellent service, sourcing stock from other stores, and communicating with us regularly. Within a few days, we had some lime-ish green pendant lights for the breakast bar and a big leafy green one over the a dining room table, both of which were on sale - hurrah! As they only had floor stock left in the breakky bar ones, they ordered us new 'kits', but gave us floor stock covers, so they were further reduced!
So, a little bit of 'colour' in the kitchen/dining area, which should still go with the
neutral/taupe colour scheme...
I'll add the rest of our selections later - if we ever get our quote back from FLS...
