ikea + yuppie = pottery barn

Let’s just say that I’m less than thrilled at the Pottery Barn living room I now have. It looks beautiful but, oh, the price paid for beauty. My maren rug, while it is beautiful, sheds more in a day than my two cats do in a month. Seriously, I’m vacuuming that rug 3 to 4 times a week to control the shedding. To be fair, the rug doesn’t shed if you don’t walk or lie on it, so I guess if you want to hang it on a wall you should find no problems with it. My sage velvet slipcovered PB basic sofa probably shaved some time off everyone in the family’s life expectancies. Very beautiful green velvet, this was the purchase I was so excited for, to cast aside the floral, horribly stained sofa with wood accents for this, my vision of luxury that I could afford. I was giddy putting the slipcover together and fussing over the cushions to the sofa to make everything just so. But after having the sofa in my living room a couple hours I started to feel really queasy. Alas, whatever sizing is in that velvet material or however the fabric is manufactured that sage velvet gives off enough VOCs to send you spinning. The slipcover took a good two months for the smell to wear off. When the slipcovered armchair arrived a month later I was wary about nauseous period as the smell wore off but fortunately, the canvas slipcover didn’t have a smell like that. The downside was the marks (pen? marker? dirt? poop?) all over the canvas slipcover. It took a half dozen Shout wipes to get the slipcover in presentable condition. The real downside to this whole experience was that whenever there was a problem with an item we received (the first maren rug we got had the binding already coming apart in four places, the velvet slipcover has a problem with the stitching in one corner) the salespeople at the store would give this whole faux servility bit like they were doing me some huge favor to help me out with a product that wasn’t up to snuff to begin with. This all culminated in my worse day in recent history this past Wednesday when I tried to return the replacement velvet slipcover that they had shipped me. Once again, to be fair, I decided that I would rather have a slipcover with messed up stitching on a corner than subjugate myself and the family to another round of VOC intoxication. I went to the store closest to me in order to drop the box off. The sticky part was that I had Oona and Owen with me (when are they not with me?!) so I asked if I could drive to their loading area in back to return the box since I couldn’t carry it and push a stroller and hold Owen’s hand across the street at the same time. The lady looked at me and was like ‘we don’t usually do that I’ll have to talk to a manager.’ So the manager comes and the sales lady gives him my story and says how I want to return the slipcover because it smelled, but she said this like it was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard. So they’re doing the obsequious passive aggressive dance of giving me a hard time because I don’t have my original receipt but I paid for the whole thing on the Pottery Barn credit card, if they enter my number they can look up my complete buying history with them, along with 1,000 other invasive credit stats probably. Plus it was in the original box it was shipped in, but the manager was acting like I was trying to pull some scam returning a discounted showroom slipcover for full price when I told him outright it was a specially made replacement. Then the manager says I can leave my metered parking space, drop it off in back and then go find a parking space again, which I think is rather insane. Then he’s like ‘We have safety issues but I guess this once…’ and I’m like ‘Forget it. Every part of this order has been a disaster. Forget it.’ Oh I was fuming I was ready to start throwing furniture through the windows and have the kids smash the glass sizzle sticks put right near the register – how impractical if anyone with kids comes in. Okay so maybe I sound overly aggressive, I didn’t actually smash anything, I just left but asked for the manager’s name and he’s like ‘Oh, can I help you with something?’ Aghh!!! Maybe, probably, I expect too much. But if I see a person with two kids in a retail store just trying to drop something off I’d think maybe about being a little bit humane and trying to help them. I know retail can be brutal, having worked retail or as a waitress for years but I wasn’t being mean and I’m not some rich, condescending patron I just wanted to return the smelly slipcover (just opening the box could get you stoned off that toxic fabric). So I went to the car and cried, yelling about the whole incident on the phone to Toby. Just a little fyi aside, I wasn’t driving, I was wallowing in the parking lot since I’m very against cell phones while driving. And the day just got better from there! The nadir must have been when I got so frustrated that I was hitting the dryer with a washed washcloth in order to get rid of my anger. Unfortunately Owen heard me smacking the dryer and got scared, I didn’t realize he could hear me in the basement and felt like an awful, abusive mother. I apologized for scaring him and he later told Toby what I did, Owen’s like my 24/7 hall monitor. When Toby got home that night I went out and got a sandwich and soda that I snuck into the movie theater and after watching the latest Harry Potter movie (Imelda Staunton is brilliant!) I felt much better.