My father and I began at the front desk wanting to rent a truck. The seasoned employee was just leaving for her lunch break. So we were stuck with the replacement. A replacement who should not be at the front desk until she has taken a course in typing or at least learned to type with more than one finger. I had to walk away for a moment to avoid watching her search for the letters on the keyboard. When I returned, I discovered that, though she understood English, she did not understand common sense. My father explained that we also had gates to pick up so he wanted to do that before the timer started on the truck. He showed her the receipt and she told him "well, they should have this since you paid for it already." So then we both explained to her that we understood that but the associate in the department would need to locate and bring the items to us, which would cut into the rental time. She said "either way, whether you go get em or we call for someone to go get em, it'll be the same." My brain said "the stupid is strong with this one" but my mouth said "that's why we don't want the keys until we have the gates in hand." She replied "it's whatever you want to do." She then called her supervisor over and we explained it to her. She understood the concept of time, unlike her subordinate who obviously skipped that course in preschool. So she put a hold on the process for us and told us where to get our order. On to the next saga.
My father hands over the slip and two employees confer before one sets off to retrieve the package. Twelve minutes go by. He returns with the wrong item. Another ten minutes pass. You counting? We are now into minute 22 of what would have been our 75 minutes of truck rental time. Third employee, who has not been introduced to a belt, shows up with his boxers hanging out over the back of his jeans and two more gates (which were actually a little beat up). He drops them off and leaves and we check the numbers and dimensions with another employee. They do not match up so we assume they are the wrong ones. The employee agrees. Keep up. That will be relevant later. So he walks us out into the yard to search for the items on our invoice. Soggy Bottom Boy is already on to the next customer. Six or seven minutes later the search concludes and fourth guy writes a phone number on the invoice and returns it to my father, telling him to call the Griffith store and ask for them to check their stock because his counts must be off. A prepaid order was not held for pickup and we are expected to call another store and fix the problem that we did not create? Once again, we return to the store and start all over.
The stupid trooper has been relieved of her duties, thankfully. The front desk manager instructs us to go to yet another department and have them call Griffith for us. The entire time I have been in the store, I've been listening to music on my iPod through an earpiece. As we are standing in the building materials department waiting for Griffith to return the call, I have listened to 3 full length songs. So at least 13 minutes have passed when another employee tells us that she will call them again if they don't return the call in the next 5 minutes. They call back three minutes later. She's excited. They have it in stock. They have it on a cart. They'll hold it for us. We have little joy to exhibit at this point. Are you keeping up? At this point, with all the walking from department to department, we're about an hour into our truck rental time. You're running a good scam, Menards.
Back up at the front we finally cancel the truck and return the prepaid items that we did not receive. We began this tale at 9:15 a.m. exactly. It concluded at 10:25 a.m. So... $22 for 5 mins of truck time. Here's the kicker. The Griffith store had the exact same gate as purple drawers kid. I asked about the differing dimensions and the educated man informed us that the dimensions on the invoice referred to the installed dimensions. Moral of the story? I'll be shopping at THE HELPFUL PLACE from now on....
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