The Home Depot by me seems to do it for everything. Also Costco. Another option is a handyman off of Craigslist.
I was thinking his friends were Brazilian. It’s quite a well-known and standard thing, if the cookout is advertised as starting at 5PM, people will look at you like you’re crazy if you show up before 7:30PM, preferably 8. Takes a lot of getting used to.
'Zactly. With a side order of
- If we tell them an hour from now and it turns out we’re ready in 45 minutes, some folks will be left behind unless we wait the full hour for them. Once we advertise a departure time, we can’t ever move it earlier.
and - If we tell them an hour, a lot of them will try to switch to a different flight. They’ll mostly fail at that, but it’ll tie up our C/S workers dealing with that crush of people. Conversely, if we tell them “just another 15 minutes” four times, most will just sit it out. They still (mostly) get there at the same time either way, and the rolling 15 minutes is best for us.
In the / your logistics / delivery case, ISTM that a LOT of the the issue is dumping a daily workload on the drivers that ensures that if they do careful work, they’ll finish half of it by end of shift, if they do slapdash work they’ll finish 90% of it by end of shift, and the only way to complete 100% of it routinely is to throw away (or steal) a few packages and lie about having delivered them.
All while paying next to nothing for workers, ensuring it’ll be recent immigrants with limited language skills and little skill at local culture as it relates to addresses and such, or the real dregs of the long time residents. In either case the error rate goes way up.
Quality doesn’t seem to enter into the equation much while cost control is king.
In the case of IKEA, they bought a company called Taskrabbit which does such assembly work (along with, presumably, other things).
I am rural and most of these stores are at least an hour away.
The closest one is a Staples store about 45 minutes distant. They do have a store with chairs one can test out on the floor. Or at least they used too.
I have to try out a computer chair before I purchase so I need to find a brick and mortar store and get together with a cousin who can provide assistance. I am working on it very slowly.
I bought a very expensive Steelcase Leap chair from the company and it came fully assembled in a big box. It’s been more than a decade, but I think I lifted off the top and was then able to wheel the chair off the base.
I would not even be able to do that kind of lifting at this point. But that does sound like an awesome but expensive option.
There are times when I have to take breaks between bringing in bags of groceries in the house from a shopping trip.
Occasionally if one of the neighbors is outside they immediately will help me so I am grateful for that.
On another note today I am awaiting a routine fall bug spray that is supposed to occur between 10 AM - Noon. It is now 11:05 AM. 
Have you considered getting the groceries delivered?
Of course you need to try the chair first. When you do go there and choose one, ask about the “white glove” service or whatever they call it. It doesn’t matter how far away the store is. It may be delivered from a warehouse elsewhere and farther away.
I have done that a few times but try to get to the store as often as I can.
A couple days ago I went to Walmart and used one of those motorized carts! I did pretty well lol. I only knocked down a stack of about 12 men’s shorts on a low-rise hanging display.
It was an Olympic medal event. They landed with one quick lurch all together on the floor when I bumped into it.
Oh, so you don’t do doctors. That explains it.
The doctors’ do things a bit differently.
They give you a 10 AM appointment 10 days from now. It’s the soonest available.
Six days later, you get a text wanting you to “check-in” by replying to the text with “yes” if you are going to make it. They also say they want you 30 minutes early so you have time for the paperwork. You text back, “Yes”.
The next morning you get a robo-call, essentially the same as the text you received the day prior. But, this time your phone rings as you are going into your boss’ office. He is not impressed.
The day prior the the appointment, you get a “message alert” on your phone, from the medical portal the doctor’s office set-up for you (based on info you put on on of their forms). Your phone goes berserk, which unnerves you because at the time you are going 75 mph down the freeway in bumper-to-bumper traffic during the morning commute and you have no idea why your phone has exploded in a cacophony of tones, squeals, and buzzes that you look around to see if there is a cop behind you.
You look ahead half a second before you see the Prius ahead of you, going 45 mph, and barely avoid an accident. You had no idea your phone was capable of such a violent clangor.
Then, you show up at 9:30 as directed. You sit in the waiting room until 11:30. A nurse calls you, takes your vitals, asks some questions, and says the doctor will be shortly. It’s now 11:40.
You sit in the cold treatment room for another hour and a half. The doc finally comes in at 1:15 and asks you the same questions as the nurse did. By 1:25, the doc says he’ll send the prescription to your pharmacy and if that doesn’t fix you up, to come back in about a week.
So, you’re out of there by around 1:30 and feel pretty good about things. You do wonder how you are going to see the doc in a week if you aren’t feeling better when the front office won’t make appointments in less than 10 days, but you don’t worry about that. At least you aren’t still waiting in that empty treatment room with the awkward posters on the wall.
Wow. I know there’s some hyperbole in there, but your experience of US medical care is nothing like mine. Not now, and at no time in the last 40 years spread across 6 states.
Pedant that I am, I am still somewhat troubled by the idea of checking in when I am not yet ‘in’.
Yeah, you gotta be careful to not check the “contact me, check-in notifications, or portal app” box, when you filling out forms.
If I get unsolicited notifications I block them.
I’m on the appointment list, I’ve dutifully called in, in a timely manner. Just wait, will ya. I’ll be there, on time with bells on.
If I allowed all the doctors offices and clinics, I use, to willy-nilly send me messages I’d never have a seconds peace.
So no, I don’t check that box.
The more I think of it, I recall the "drop it off the tailgate” delivery was a piano. Somewhat humorously, we were buying a used piano from a music school. When it was supposed to be delivered, we got a call saying they weren’t going to deliver it that day, and asked if we would accept a brand new piano a couple of days later. We said, “Of course.” When the guys delivered the new piano, they said another crew was going to deliver the piano we originally ordered, but neglected to adequately tie it down such that it was bouncing around in the back of the truck! 
The guys were laughing about that and were perfectly happy to bring the piano they were delivering a straight shot into our house.
I sorry this will be a long story.
My cousin (best friend) is a musician. Started on piano when she was 6yo. She had a real nice Yamaha in storage, she could not use it. I was gonna hire a crew to bring it to my house. But it was damaged in a flood. My Wife and I both want to learn, and…
We.
Have.
A.
Perfect place for a nice electric piano. I don’t know what else I would put there to be honest with you. Room is right, acoustics good.
So I pulled the trigger on it. Amazon asked “Do you want to use your saved up points?” (I never knew of such a thing). Sure, why not? The $2000 piano cost me $168 . SCORE!
Score indeed! Congrats. May it give you both a lot of happy hours at home.
A few years ago we ordered 30 or so bags of decorative rocks from either Lowe’s or Home Depot. The first third party last-mile delivery company bailed entirely and dropped it off at some local distributor. They found someone else, who came by while my wife was home and said they couldn’t complete the delivery because they just had two guys and a pallet jack and couldn’t get out off the truck (how did they get it on?), then finally came back a few days later with … one guy and a pallet jack. He managed to get it off the truck, but couldn’t drag it up the driveway. I helped but it was too heavy. We ended up having to move all the bags one by one so they weren’t blocking the driveway.
If I had wanted to move them by myself, I wouldn’t have paid for delivery.
I had a delayed flight move earlier, recently. Or was a welcome surprise to me. Even though i had to trot back from buying supper in the airport.
While one of my doctors is often late (and routinely spends more time with me than the system “allows”) the rest of your post is completely foreign to my experience. I usually get an email (no sound) and a text (one quiet beep, if I’m home. No sound if I’m on “do not disturb”, which i was when I
worked in an office) urging me to check in via the app. I always do this, because there’s a ton of questions to answer, and my consent signatures are are actually tied to the thing i read, unlike if i do that in the doctor’s office, where just they ask for my signature on an electronic dohicky and may not even show me what I’m “signing” unless i explicitly ask. It can take me half an hour to fill out the paperwork, and I’d prefer to do that at a convenient time at home, and not at the doctor’s office.
I’m now getting a ton of alerts about my husband’s health, because he added me to his portal. But… Each one is just an email. Like, I’m literally averaging 3 separate alerts a day for my husband, and it’s not disruptive.