A little behind with the times

After much debate and going back and forth as to whether we were going to redo our kitchen counters ourselves or pay someone, we gave in and headed to Home Depot to take advantage of the last day of their 10%. We knew exactly what we wanted, had a picture sketched out of our counters with accurate dimensions, and had already priced it out using their online counter top estimator. It was around 7:30 when we arrived. After ringing the little "I need assistance" button in the kitchen department we were greeted by David who was actually supposed to be off for the rest of the night but was asked to help us anyway. Needless to say I think this may have been David's first week on the job. All he really needed to do was:

• Draw a picture of my kitchen with dimensions, which I already did


• Calculate the square footage, which I already did


• Give us an estimate for the counter top


• and then let us pay.

Sounds simple, yet it wasn't. He tried to draw the picture in pen which didn't go well. Before drawing each line he would move the pen back and forth over the place the line went but without actually touching the paper (kind of like a practice swing) and then finally commit-- usually incorrectly. Mind you I did hand him my drawing. After almost completing it he gave up and started over. I thought he was playing a cruel joke on me. Nope. Attempt two looked worse than one. He made some joke like "I hope your husband (who was chasing E around the store to try to keep him entertained) isn't an engineer". I said "Oh, he's not... but I am". He looked at me first as if I was joking and then looked a little horrified when he realized I wasn't. At that point I think he got performance anxiety and decided to ditch the drawings all together and just attempt to calculate the square footage without it. You can imagine how quickly that went, or should I say didn't go, and in the end he derived a number very similar to the one I told him maybe and hour and a half earlier. Fast forward through lots more simple math and pecking into a dos program on the computer with a screaming kid in the background because he had poopy pants and a diaper rash and the night finally ended at 10:15. WOW. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. The most amusing thing about all this is that Home Depot trained this poor old man to do everything by hand when they have this handy dandy program online that draws the figure to scale, calculated the square footage, records all the specifications and outputs the price all in about 10 minutes. In the end though I think it will all be worth it.