My Pottery Barn Adventure

Today started out as a beautiful day. I finally had an appointment to get my hair cut and colored in Rittenhouse and then my sofa was going to be delivered! I should have known this day that it wasn't going to be that easy or enjoyable as I anticipated. I thought I should drive to my hair appointment so that I didn't arrive a sweaty mess and left with plenty of time to get parked. Well it took me 20 minutes to find a spot, but at least it was on the same block as the salon. There was a limit of 2 hour parking but I had checked ahead of time with the salon and they said I should be done by that time. To make a long story short, it took my new stylist 90 minutes to just put the color in my hair. By that time I had had 5 missed calls from the Pottery Barn driver telling me that hes two hours early! I called him back and asked him to wait another 45 minutes (which was still 15 minutes before the scheduled delivery time). He said he could wait for me so I rescheduled the haircut for this evening and ran out of the salon with dripping wet hair.

As I'm walking to my car I can see the parking authority ticketing my car! I start yelling and run towards the guy to try to catch him. He's oblivious, puts the ticket on my car, and walks away. I finally get to him and he explains that if I had caught him while he was writing it, he could have thrown it out, but I caught him after he was done. I was 2 minutes late, 2 minutes!! After begging him to forgive the almost $40 ticket (on top of the $4 it cost to park there) he insisted that those were the rules and he couldn't do anything about it. A nice girl stopped and told him to just give me a break pointing out that after all, I had wet hair! He could have just taken the ticket back but if you know anything about the Philadelphia Parking Authority you know that they're heartless. They're so ridiculous that they have their own show on A&E.

I decided it would be only fitting if the delivery truck wasn't there and it wasn't. I parked too close to an iron fence and had to get out of my passenger door, ran up to my apartment and called the delivery guy. He told me he would be there in a little bit, not giving me any idea of what that means. As you have probably already guessed I am so furious at this point that I get on the phone with Pottery Barn. I am astonished that a company like this (freakin' expensive!) would be so disorganized. The customer service rep was extremely understanding (I told her the whole story, including the wet hair and parking ticket) and she was equally astonished about the drivers.

Finally an hour later they show up with my sofa. After 10 minutes of turning it around and around in the hallway the guys tell me if it doesn't fit this one last way, its not coming in. But I wasn't having that, so it comes through, with some help from me! At the end of the night, I am a happy camper, pleased with my sofa and finally feeling like this place is becoming a cozy little home. And as for Pottery Barn, they graciously credited my account the cost of the shipping, so I guess they can remain on my good side :)