I Hate Radio Shack

I hate Radio Shack.
Just so you know.
No really, I H-A-T-E Radio Shack.

I have never, never, never had a good experience in that establishment. Now I know that I may not be the most capable person to walk into that store and purchase an item easy-peasy, but I do know that my husband is beyond capable and when he tells me exactly what I need to buy,  I feel fairly certain that I can accomplish something as simple as plucking an item off the shelf. {breath}

Yesterday was not so.

Wednesday night, Stuart broke his CPAP. I know, I know. Well, he didn't break the machine but the power supply. To be fair, Scout broke the power supply shortly after we introduced her to our family and Stuart fixed it, well, easy-peasy. But after all the moving and constant take down of the machine between our house and his work house, the chords got too twisted and finally gave up the ghost Wednesday night-right as he was going to bed. Lovely.

Being that I am now in the position to make runs to all sorts of places all day long, I offered to go pick up a new "whatever" so that he would be able to just come home from work and be done with the whole thing.

Enter the problem.

Since his CPAP is not just your run of the mill machine, is has more than your run of the mill chords. Stuart really thought that the only place that would have something so specific was Radio Shack. {Gulp}

Seriously, I have NEVER had a good experience there. Their associates are rude, treat me like I am from another planet and are utterly unhelpful in my quest to navigate the QRS system of electronics on their shelves.

But I wanted to do this for my darling husband (are you reading this hon?). So I packed up the boys and went. I should also interject here that our morning began with a scenic tour of the San Antonio International Airport or Air Force as Tucker says. After leaving that chaos with a screaming child because he didn't get to fly in the Air Force, I followed my GPS to the nearest Radio Shack location which did not exist. Great.

After some searching, I ended up at a real store.

Enter bratty, just over teenage, female associate.

Girl: Yes?
Me: I need to get another one of these. (places dismembered "whatever" on counter)
Girl: What is it?
Me: Well, it the power supply to my husband's CPAP. He uses it to breath at night.
Girl: Huh?
Me: Um, I don't really know what this is called but I...
Girl: Well we don't have that.
Me: OK. My husband said you would...
Girl: Ugh. Well you have a lot of parts inside there and you would have to completely rebuild that board.
Me: Oh! Yeah, I don't need all these components, I just need to entire mechanism. My husband just took the cover off so that he could jery-rig it for last night.
Girl: Whatever. (rolls eyes)
Me: Excuse me?
Girl: Well I guess I could sell you the individual parts.
Me: OK, do you think you can pull them for me?
Girl: No.

Do you see where I'm going with this? Rudeness, cutting me off, inability to want to help, unprofessional-ism, rolling of the eyes. Oh mylanta, I was ready to take her head off. Not only was I standing there trying to keep it together, but my children were pulling off my arm (since I was holding both of them with one hand) while simultaneously trying to call Stuart to get the exact name of what this is called. Then to top it all off, she walks away as I'm trying to talk to her. Walks away.

Stupid, stupid woman.

So I did what any tired, nerve frayed mother would do: I called the District Manager of Radio Shack.

That's right.

The manager's name and number were proudly displayed in front of the cash register and I very proudly called the number and in my nicest "I'm about to pummel your employee" voice, I explained to the woman on the other end that I was beyond frustrated with the current employee of Radio Shack. She in turn apologized several times for the associated behavior and promised me that she would call that specific store's manager to explain my concerns. Not the fireworks that I wanted, but it'll have to do.

Turns out that we ended up going to Altex* to get the part; a store that makes my husband go coo-coo for Cocao Puffs in. Seriously, it's just that awesome to him. We totally forgot about that store.

*Yet another bonus for moving to SA.