This is getting insane.
March: Bitch about the seller
April: Can’t find anyone to install a stove.
The kicker: The stove is electric. Move box. Unplug box. Move new box near outlet. Plug in new box. Slide box into slot.
Can’t wait for “It doesn’t work like I want it to”.
Fuckin’ Kenmore/Whirlpool. When I moved into this house, I got a Kenmore Oasys washer and matching dryer. Many years later, the dryer developed an issue where it would beep incessantly and flash numbers when not in use. Turns out that this particular dryer is known for having a faulty circuit board, and Whirlpool has never bothered to fix the problem…so if I buy a new circuit board, I’ll eventually have the same problem. (I deal with this by shutting the dryer off at the circuit breaker when it’s not in use.) And the washer always experiences multiple “low flow” faults at the beginning of a wash cycle, despite the lack of any debris in the hoses or at the connections.
And for the “Fuck Sears” part of the story…when I initially bought the washer and dryer, I made the mistake of purchasing the hoses at the store, but allowing the hoses to be included with delivery instead of taking them with me. >.< The lovely installation crew never made it to my house with the hoses, claiming that they were needed for another installation earlier in the day. It took Sears several days to deliver replacement hoses.
Is their main problem the way they run the store? Craftsman tools were very, very good, and had a lifetime warranty on simple tools at any rate. I broke a 10mm socket, walked into the store with it, and got another one free. Did they develop a policy of hiring assholes?
I think that they started circling the drain some time ago. First Wal-mart and Target basically cut them out of the lower end tier that they used to compete in. When I was a kid, you went to Sears for cheap clothes,vacuum cleaners, and other assorted items.
Then Home Depot, Lowes, and Best Buy came in and started selling appliances which used to be Sears’ bread and butter. When I was growing up, Sears did sell good tools but you would still go to the hardware store for a lot of stuff.
The stores haven’t really changed much or been updated for a long time. They got rid of the paint department at the Sears I used to go to a few years back to sell golf equipment. Sears seems to be flailing to find a market niche, but they’ve lost a lot of the goodwill that they used to have.
I was hunting for a cheap fridge and Sears isn’t really competitive. Home Depot, Lowes, and Best Buy all offer free shipping, Sears doesn’t.
Seeing Sears in the death throes of retail consumerism makes me sad. Sears & Roebuck was the toy store of my youth, as it was for generations of American youth. Virtually all of my Christmas and birthday gifts came from S&R in the 60’s; as did my bother and sister’s in the 50’s.
S&R stood for no-frills quality and durability. When my father was discharged from the Army Air Corps at the end of WWII, he brought his English War bride to America, took a mortgage on a small house and bought a Craftsman Table Saw in 1945. He used that saw hard and often for the next half century, just having to replace the belt once in a while. Carpentry was just a hobby for him, but, I’d put any of his many projects up against those of any master carpenter. I was his wood holding assistant for many years and that brings back fond memories. “Don’t get your fingers too close to the blade, son.” That saw sits in my garage to this day, still in perfect working order. I’d use it, if I had any fingers left.
In the early 20th century, S&R was my grandparent’s retail establishment, too. They bought saddles and riding crops (they didn’t have a horse; they were just kinky).
Sure enough, S&R went through some embarrassing marketing schemes throughout their long history that they don’t talk much about anymore. Their **Craftsman Field Slaves **and Kenmore House Slaves never really caught on, despite being offered in a variety of sizes (only one color, though).
At a time when boys were men and men were grizzly bears, the Sears Christmas catalog was the year’s most anticipated mailbox shipment. Sure, JC Penny and Wards et al had their own Christmas catalogs, but those were strictly for girls with cooties.
For reference, go to this site: wishbookweb.com and open the link to the 1964 Sears Christmas Catalog. Let me introduce you to the superior toys of pre-internet youth:
Page 155. When I was 4 years old, Santa gave me an earlier model of the tractor on the top of the page. On my maiden journey down the driveway I ended up in the street and nearly got run over by a large Buick. On my second run, the tractor’s right wheel spun off the axel and I skinned my knee on the asphalt. I never saw the tractor again, and Santa never replaced it with another toy—the bastard.
Page 222: I got an Aurora HO Slot Car track when I was 7 (my older brother got the Lionel Train Set). Most neighborhood boys had their own HO tracks and we’d make the circuit, racing our little slot cars to exhaustion at one another’s house. My red Ford GT died on a neighbors track after running dozens of races undefeated. Pure, unadulterated fun.
Page 237: I got a Vac-U-Form when I was 6. Do you know how they have those expensive 3-D printers today? The Vac-U-Forms puts those to shame. Using only a 4”x4” square sheet of thin plastic, placed over a negative mold, then vacuumed over extreme heat, any boy or girl could make a myriad (at least 6) of fully customizable (you could paint them any color of your choice), thin plastic objects. Believe me, the 2nd and 3rd degree burns I sustained were worth the effort.
Page 294: What’s better than playing golf on an actual golf course or playing one of those stupid video golf games of today? The All Star 9-hole Golf Course, that’s what! Play action so real, you’d swear you were Arnold Palmer.
Page124: Vibrating Football. The play action and realism were dead-on with this game. Who needs to watch the Super Bowl on TV when you could watch little plastic football players vibrate and fall across the field?
Page 343: For sheer, adrenalin-pumping excitement, every child needed an electric Rock Tumbler. I didn’t have the deluxe model shown on that page. Mine was the 1963 basic, no frills, economy model. But, that was good enough for me. The first of 16 steps on the road to polished rocks was to put a handful of rocks into the tumbler along with the included packet of coarse grit sand, then plug it in (only the deluxe model had an on/off switch).
You had to keep it on and tumbling for the next few years before getting to Step 2. But, sitting down next to the tumbler and listening to the rocks tumble was quite the adrenalin rush. When Step 1 was complete, you unplug the tumbler, remove the course grain grit and replace it with medium grit sand—then plug it in for another few years. Then, you unplug the machine again, replace the medium grit sand with fine-grit sand and tumble for another few years. Then you unplug the machine and replace the fine-grit sand with coarse grit polish, followed by medium-grit polish, then fine-grit polish. Then there are a few steps where you tumble your rocks in more esoteric materials, like bull semen.
On my 65th birthday, I will be ready for the final tumbling stage, Step 16. Unfortunately, I lost the last packet of tumbling material and I don’t remember what it’s supposed to be. So, my rocks may not end up being smooth and shiny…but, it was a hell of a fun journey!
Page 99: You can keep your laser discs and your streaming mp4’s, give me my Kenner Give-A-Show any old time. Gather ‘round with you bowls of popcorn kids, the show’s about to start! After the 20 second show, it was time to move on to something else.
Page 203: I always asked for a plastic army set, but never got one. The best I could do was steal one of my brother’s plastic soldiers and pair him with a broken off music box ballerina. They couldn’t engage in any pitched battles, but they pas de deux’ed their asses off. Dude ended up with PTSD and slashed the tiny dancer’s throat, though.
Page 210: One year I got a GI Joe with the plastic hair. He was a tough lone warrior. The next year I got a stockier GI with thick, black fuzzy hair and a beard. And, I got a tent for him and original Joe to sleep in. Turns out Joe and Fuzzy the Bear were gay. This was before don’t ask, don’t tell, so I had to court martial them both.
Page 113: Carrom Table. Apparently one could play an infinite variety of games on a Carrom Table. I would have been happy to have learned to play just one. That thing stayed in my bedroom for decades and I still can’t figure it out.
Page 319 and 321: Cats, dogs, guinea pigs and hamsters didn’t last long at our house.
After a busy morning spent paging through all the cool toys available in the Wishbook, it was customary for us young horny boys to mosey on over to the girls sleepwear section of the catalog and ogle the cute girls—like that little vixen at the top middle of page 5, yowsa!
…Oops, sorry, I meant the top middle of page 545 (544.jpg). Guy’s don’t ogle too much, she’s not age appropriate for you anymore…well, she’s probably around 60 now, so who knows?—it’s confusing.
My father’s 1945 Table Saw looks exactly like the model pictured top right on page 342. Things of quality need not change.
Yep, Sears used to be great; now they suck. That sucks.
Vac-U-Form what was the deal with the plastic airplanes? I never was able to vac u form them. 
Ah, carni my good fellow, that was your first (but, no doubt not your last) mistake: you never use the cast forms included in the Vac-U-Form kit. Full stop. End of story. Fini.
That Vac-U-Form airplane cast-form was indeed a stinking pile of doo doo (excuse my French).
Instead, I put my hamster, Mr. Snickers, spread-eagle on the Vac-U-Form platform and heat-vacuumed the plastic on top of him.
It made a truly awesome glider!
Unfortunately, Mr. Snickers didn’t fare nearly as well. 
There’s your mistake. You’re supposed to use a flying squirrel.
My Wife has one of those. It would not fit.
Perhaps a death mask of my sister’s doll, if I had one.
This sounds like it’s encroaching on TMI territory. Where exactly was your wife trying to fit the squirrel?!?
This post belongs in the SDMB Hall of Fame. And that is all I have to say about that.
I hate those bastards after the Lawnmower Incident. :dubious:
Mrs. Plant has a pet flying squirrel.
As a child, I had a vac-u-form.
Running coach recommends using a flying squirrel to make a vac-u-form mold.
A flying squirrel would not fit into the vac-u-form.
Ah, yes…that’s just as I supposed. No TMI at all here, folks…keep it moving along!
I am very happy to resolve the matter for you. :dubious:
If you’re thinking of resolving the matter by introducing a rodent anywhere into my body—don’t! I already have a gerbil, and he’s quite happy in his snug burrow. :dubious: