Monday, March 23, 2009

The Fridge

Got my new fridge delivered yesterday. At first, I was fairly impressed by the level of packaging. Each shelf was taped in place, with blocks of styrofoam wedged in top and bottom on each glass shelf, to prevent any sort of shaking during the shipping and installation process.

However, as the "delivery" service provided by Best Buy did not include the removal of said packing materials, I've come to have a different opinion of the enthusiasticness with which tape has been applied to my fridge.

The fridge was nice and clean when delivered. After I spent a half hour with my upper body wedged in there, getting my hair caught on stray bits of tape, the whole thing needs a good clean.

And it was a half hour. At least. Several shelves were taped on all four sides, requiring their removal from the fridge so I could get the tape in back. And, in addition to tape on all four sides and styrofoam blocks taped to the center, there were also (for reasons I do not understand) two little round stickers on each glass shelf, labelled "remove." So, yeah, I had to peel off stickers too (and sometimes, they didn't peel off and I had to pick at them with fingernails.)

But the worst part was when they'd tape wire shelves in place, and the tape would be wrapped around the wire and then taped back to itself. Try getting THAT off. After a half hour with the fridge -- removing styrofoam, strapping tape, blue tape, cardboard, and little round stickers from damn near every place I could see (and once getting my finger caught in a tape loop still attached to the corner of a shelf, and thinking I'd die of starvation and they'd find my body taped to my fridge), my fridge still has four pieces of blue tape wrapped around wire shelf spokes. They're sorta waving there, like ribbons.

I want to see a game show where you give each of two people a suitable-packaged for shipping fridge, and the challenge is to remove every piece of packaging material without damaging the fridge. Winner gets their fridge.

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