Time Out
Walt and Aaron discovered this afternoon that Floorcraft sent us a wrong-sized cabinet. When Aaron started to install the wall cabinets today, he called me in the morning and said that we'd need a 3" scribe because the cabinet wasn't flush with the wall (a "scribe" is basically a spacer -- I'm becoming more adept than I'd like with cabinetry terms). That sounded weird to me, since I'd discussed the layout with the salesperson and told him that the cabinet needed to be flush, but I thought perhaps I'd forgotten that we needed a scribe. At any rate, later in the day Walt calls me to say that the other wall cabinet is 33" wide but the one that they just installed is 30" wide.
Of course now we've installed the wrong cabinet, so we have to tear that down from the wall, go talk to Floorcraft and explain that they need to order a new cabinet that's 33". I was really feeling happy when I first placed this order with Floorcraft; they're a family-run business in the city, the salesperson was far more knowledgable than the Home Despot person, and I thought I had gotten good advice regarding the layout. After all of these snafus, I've become a net detractor of the place and would tell any friend to run screaming in the other direction (this concept of "net promoter" and "net detractor" is something that we use at Intuit -- basically, in a highly simplified way, the number of promoters are those who would recommend your product or service to a friend). And I think our salesperson was an idiot. One of my friends at work has a brother who is a developer, and when Chris was complaining to him about some tradesman/salesperson problem, his brother said to him, "There is a reason that these people are in these jobs." I just keep trying to remind myself of this as I get more and more frustrated with each setback. I suppose the good thing about the cabinets is that nothing arrived broken, so we're at least able to install the base cabinets; with any luck, we might have a working kitchen sink by next week.
I suspect, however, that given the 6 week lead time of the original cabinets, that getting a replacement will take a long time. Walt is going to try to go over to Floorcraft tomorrow to explain the situation; I'm hoping that if at least one of us is there in person, it will put some heat on them to fix this. We also realized that they sent us one extra cabinet (in addition to one that's the wrong size). As far as I can tell, they sent us a cabinet where the dishwasher will go -- the extra cabinet is 24" and the dishwasher is 24" wide. So out of an order of 8 cabinets total, 1 is wrong and we have an extra one -- a 25% error rate. This whole thing is irritating me so much -- and will doubtless cost us even more money as we have to schedule Aaron to come back again in a few weeks to install this missing cabinet -- that I feel like writing another nasty missive to the general manager. Obviously the first vitriolic letter didn't do much (other than make me feel better), but perhaps two might be more effective than one.
Devon, in addition to getting more verbal, is also trying to assert herself more, which often results in a tantrum. This evening she was a little high strung, and she had a couple of little incidents where she was screamy for no real reason. Our friend Bob came over to dinner (which consists of all of us sitting around the cheapo coffee table on the living room floor and eating takeout -- tonight it was hummus, baba ghanouj and falafel from the Palestinian place by Walt's studio -- followed by me running across the hall to Burke's where I can use a working sink to clean up), and Devon was really keyed up about it. During dinner she had a total meltdown about something that was so minor that I can't actually remember it, but we decided to try to implement the "time out" strategy.
Last month we got a handout from our pediatrician about "time outs" and how to prepare children for them. Essentially it recommended that you start it out as a game and have a child sit on a towel (or similar) while you move progressively farther away from them, and you praise them as they stay on the towel while you move away. Once the child is able to stay on the towel when you leave the room, you can institute time outs. Of course Walt and I haven't done any training in this area; it's on the "we really should do that" list that never gets done. However, I took a kicking and screaming Devon into her room, where she lay on the floor and wailed for a few minutes while I went back in to finish dinner. I have to say, even though this apartment is small and we can hear everything, it was nice to be able to sit and finish dinner like a civilized person without constant interruptions on the Devon schedule. After about 5 minutes of crying, I went into the kitchen to get something and she came out of her room (I think she heard me go into the kitchen), still crying. I did soothe her for a couple of minutes, though, and she recovered most of the way (helped along by some milk and Zeebie).
I've noticed that once she gets worked up, it takes her a long time to relax. She'll work herself up into a real state of hysterics, and even when she's mentally recovered, she'll have little fits of crying for several minutes afterwards. And then she's fragile for a good 15-30 minutes after all of that, where minor criticism or a raised tone of voice will set her off again. We were at the JCC this weekend, and Devon was rebelling against putting on clothes in the lockerroom. A woman in a locker next to us asked how old she was, and when I said 19 months, the woman said, "Oh yes, 19 months going on 3." It was pretty amusing since it was almost exactly the same thing that Elaine had said to us a couple of weeks ago about Devon.
Of course now we've installed the wrong cabinet, so we have to tear that down from the wall, go talk to Floorcraft and explain that they need to order a new cabinet that's 33". I was really feeling happy when I first placed this order with Floorcraft; they're a family-run business in the city, the salesperson was far more knowledgable than the Home Despot person, and I thought I had gotten good advice regarding the layout. After all of these snafus, I've become a net detractor of the place and would tell any friend to run screaming in the other direction (this concept of "net promoter" and "net detractor" is something that we use at Intuit -- basically, in a highly simplified way, the number of promoters are those who would recommend your product or service to a friend). And I think our salesperson was an idiot. One of my friends at work has a brother who is a developer, and when Chris was complaining to him about some tradesman/salesperson problem, his brother said to him, "There is a reason that these people are in these jobs." I just keep trying to remind myself of this as I get more and more frustrated with each setback. I suppose the good thing about the cabinets is that nothing arrived broken, so we're at least able to install the base cabinets; with any luck, we might have a working kitchen sink by next week.
I suspect, however, that given the 6 week lead time of the original cabinets, that getting a replacement will take a long time. Walt is going to try to go over to Floorcraft tomorrow to explain the situation; I'm hoping that if at least one of us is there in person, it will put some heat on them to fix this. We also realized that they sent us one extra cabinet (in addition to one that's the wrong size). As far as I can tell, they sent us a cabinet where the dishwasher will go -- the extra cabinet is 24" and the dishwasher is 24" wide. So out of an order of 8 cabinets total, 1 is wrong and we have an extra one -- a 25% error rate. This whole thing is irritating me so much -- and will doubtless cost us even more money as we have to schedule Aaron to come back again in a few weeks to install this missing cabinet -- that I feel like writing another nasty missive to the general manager. Obviously the first vitriolic letter didn't do much (other than make me feel better), but perhaps two might be more effective than one.
Devon, in addition to getting more verbal, is also trying to assert herself more, which often results in a tantrum. This evening she was a little high strung, and she had a couple of little incidents where she was screamy for no real reason. Our friend Bob came over to dinner (which consists of all of us sitting around the cheapo coffee table on the living room floor and eating takeout -- tonight it was hummus, baba ghanouj and falafel from the Palestinian place by Walt's studio -- followed by me running across the hall to Burke's where I can use a working sink to clean up), and Devon was really keyed up about it. During dinner she had a total meltdown about something that was so minor that I can't actually remember it, but we decided to try to implement the "time out" strategy.
Last month we got a handout from our pediatrician about "time outs" and how to prepare children for them. Essentially it recommended that you start it out as a game and have a child sit on a towel (or similar) while you move progressively farther away from them, and you praise them as they stay on the towel while you move away. Once the child is able to stay on the towel when you leave the room, you can institute time outs. Of course Walt and I haven't done any training in this area; it's on the "we really should do that" list that never gets done. However, I took a kicking and screaming Devon into her room, where she lay on the floor and wailed for a few minutes while I went back in to finish dinner. I have to say, even though this apartment is small and we can hear everything, it was nice to be able to sit and finish dinner like a civilized person without constant interruptions on the Devon schedule. After about 5 minutes of crying, I went into the kitchen to get something and she came out of her room (I think she heard me go into the kitchen), still crying. I did soothe her for a couple of minutes, though, and she recovered most of the way (helped along by some milk and Zeebie).
I've noticed that once she gets worked up, it takes her a long time to relax. She'll work herself up into a real state of hysterics, and even when she's mentally recovered, she'll have little fits of crying for several minutes afterwards. And then she's fragile for a good 15-30 minutes after all of that, where minor criticism or a raised tone of voice will set her off again. We were at the JCC this weekend, and Devon was rebelling against putting on clothes in the lockerroom. A woman in a locker next to us asked how old she was, and when I said 19 months, the woman said, "Oh yes, 19 months going on 3." It was pretty amusing since it was almost exactly the same thing that Elaine had said to us a couple of weeks ago about Devon.
posted by Devon Szalva at
9:01 PM
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