(no subject)

[warthog9]

Central void of yuppiness or Why some companies are dumb or please lord let me never be THAT pretentious

So today I decided to add a 3rd shelf to the growing number of shelves bolted to my living room wall. A couple months back I bought some shelves from Ikea and had to stain them to get them to match the bookcases that are in my living room. This is anothe one of those, it's a bit darker than the other two but since it's further up you can't really tell. So I ended up putting a rather large book full of shakespeare and the dragon poster I bought at Gencon on it. Honestly it looks pretty good and I am now inspired to actually get things framed and up on my wall! I also decided that since I've been on something of a cleaning and organizing kick that I should go and buy the bookshelf for this one nook I have. It didn't go well.

So, what I want is some sort of modularish shelving thats about 6ft tall by roughly 36-40in wide and about 12 - 14in deep. I originally thought something like Ikea's Gorm collection would work. But sadly it's made of pine, and honestly, not the best quality pine at that. So even if I stain it, which will be a giant mess and nigh impossible as I don't really have the space, It's flimsy and well.. yeah. Not going to work. So I've been pondering what can go there, ohhh it has one more requirement: the electrical breakers for my apartment would be at the back of this, so it needs an open back. So since I've been putting up all this wire shelving at home, and since The Container Store is just up the road in Santana Row, I thought I'd give them a shot. They actually cary some of the really GOOD wire shelving, and since I'm going to be using this rather seriously I would like to make sure it's of some quality. So I give them a call and ask 'do you have the silver/chrome metro shelves in the 14x36in size in stock?' they wander off, come back and tell me that indeed they did. So I decide to trek over there. This too did not go well.

So I get over to Santan Row, and for those of you not in the San Jose area, let me explain Santan Row: It's pure yuppie central. I've sat at a cafe thats on the main drag there, doing my best to spend as little as possible, just to watch the cars drive up and down the main drag. Why? In 10 minutes I saw 3 ferrari's, 2 lamburghini's, a lotus and several other cars that are probably worth more than the total sum of all my assetts. The funny part was, they were all looking for parking spots on the main drag so they can show of their cars, instead of parking in the parking garage like 'normal' people. Anyway, so I get to Santana Row, and I get into the parking garage where people immediately turn dumb. I mean it's unfathomable how people will be fighting for parking spots on levels 1 or 2 of a parking garage where by the time I get to the top level (4th in this case) there are more parking spaces than I can shake a stick at. Lazy human beings! (DARN YOU KAISER PERMANENTE AND YOUR THRIVE CAMPAIGN CONVINCING ME TO PARK FURTHER AWAY SO I WALK MORE!) Anyway, so I park and wander into The Container Store.

The store is fairly quiet, so I head up and run into another gentleman looking at the metro shelving. So this other gentleman gets some assistance and starts pondering some of this shelving for his work (he apparently works at cisco). So yeah, this didn't turn out well. An incredibly nice associate, named Christina, came over to ask the guy who was helping the Cisco employee a question. This is where things start going wrong. He basically starts trying to put some moves on the poor girl and the associate helping him kinda plays along with the whole thing and teases her as well. They end up delaying her while she's trying to help someone else and yeah. So she ends up escaping and I make mention that what the Cisco guy is after is this certain size of the metro shelving he's after, since I'm using the stuff exactly as he wants to use it, at work. Well so now I'm designated a buddy of this guy for just trying to help out, joy. Anyway the Cisco gentleman and the associate go back to talking at some point, half including me though I'm not doing much to stay included, and their conversation quickly devolves to talking about Christina. I wouldn't normally care but when the associate starts commenting about how horny she is to a customer, and they go so far as to call her over to ask her her age - there is something WRONG! Even when she had finally escaped again and some lady who was reasonably attractive walked by at the other end of the isle he gawked and nearly cat called, turned to me and said 'hey I'm single what can I do?'. I genuinely felt sorry for Christina, she seemed lovely from the information that was dragged out of her by those two, and she didn't really seem to appreciate their advances. I did try to divert her from those two, but they didn't make it easy which probably makes me as guilty as they are :-(. And after ALL of that, and getting down there 'ohhh yeah our company doesn't even carry the size of shelf your looking for, we don't have anything for you - can't even special order it.' Joy.

So I'm annoyed and I leave The Container Store empty handed, head over to Crate and Barrel to pick up a replacement plate since I chipped one of mine and so the trip wasn't a total waste. Get my plate and leave. Parking garage is again a pain, and when I get out I get dumped onto the main drag. As I was looking out my car trying to get back to a normal street is boggled my mind at how yuppie they all were. It was just dripping with it. I ended up punch some deep base techno / grunge up on my car's stereo, turned up the volume and had to drive all the way down and all the way back to get to where I wanted to go.

Only thing I could do to try and bring reality to yuppievill.