Some eight weeks ago, life here in TCP's Alaska was a relative breeze. I went to work. I ate food. I slept. Repeat cycle.
Since then, however, things have changed, and my life has descended into a maelstrom pit of despair and hopelessness. Why, you didn't ask? I backed into the garage door of my rental house.
It was a typical morning. I awoke at 5 am, went to the gym, came back home, showered, dressed, and made my lunch. I opened the door to the garage, and just inside of the doorway, I pushed the button on the wall to open the automatic garage door opener. It started to go up, as it had every other morning, and I took no notice of it, as I typically don't.
At this point, I should say that the rental house came with a garage door opener remote that goes on your keychain. I had never seen that before (and now I know why). Stupidly, I had actually put the remote on my keychain. I had noticed that the remote would activate at strange times, such as when I was pulling my keys out of my pocket or turning the ignition key or whatever, but it did not occur to me that this might be a major problem. Until this very morning in question.
So, I exited the house into the garage, pushed the garage door opener button on the wall, and proceeded to my SUV. I entered the car, peeked out the rear view mirror to make sure things were clear (no moose or neighbor children or other such wildlife), turned the ignition key, and put the car in reverse. And then WHAM! What the hell was that? I got out of the vehicle, and that's when I noticed that the garage door had not gone all the way up, and I had struck the bottom panel of the door with my car. FUUUUUUUCCCKKK! It was bowed out, and the wheels were out of the tracks. Like an idiot, I panicked and hit the garage door remote on my keychain. The door moved a couple of inches and started crumpling on the sides, and then stopped with a sickening crunch.
Clearly, as I was entering the SUV, the keychain remote had activated and had caused the door to stop going up. I didn't notice it because the door was just high enough to not be seen out of the rear view mirror, but not high enough so that the SUV would pass under it. Again, FUUUCCCCKKKK!
The door was now hopelessly stuck, and I couldn't even get the SUV out through the other, smaller garage door. On top of that, I had left my cell phone at work the night before and had no way of calling anyone. After maneuvering my SUV around to no avail, I gave up and e-mailed my co-workers an SOS to come and help me and bring my cell phone. One did, and we managed to remove the crumpled door panel from the door. As my co-worker removed the last bolt on the last hinge, the door panel struck me square on the head because I was stupidly standing right underneath it. This was shaping up to be a really miserable day. Little did I know that the day would never end.
Later that day, I decided I didn't want to leave the door with the bottom panel missing, and I thought it would be better if if I closed the door so that the missing panel was the top one. That would make it harder for people and animals to get in. My co-worker, in the interest of safety, had unplugged the garage door opener that morning, and it never occurred to me to plug it back in and try to use it to close the door. Instead, I got up with a ladder to start moving the door, and since there was no garage door opener to stop it, and the three remaining panels are VERY HEAVY, it came hurtling down as fast as lightning, crashing loudly as it hit the pavement. A couple of more wheels came off the track, the garage door opener linkage mechanism snapped off, and the door stuck in that position, which actually wasn't a bad deal. I could easily have lost a limb if one had been in the way, but fortunately, one wasn't.
Well, now at least things were stable and relatively secure. I stapled some cardboard and plastic sheeting over the opening to keep out most of the weather, and waited for word on when the replacement panel might show up. This is when things really get depressing.
I checked a local door and window place, and they said that they wouldn't be able to even come out and look at it until the following Monday. I tried another, and they said that they would just order the door panel from the first guys and mark it up, so I was better off going with the first guys. I e-mailed the owner of the house, and he said I should talk to a local builders supply chain, who were the guys who built the door originally. I won't name them because I'm about to rip them an new asshole online.
In any event, these business geniuses sent over an installer, and he took measurements and made a parts list. They said they would be able to order the door panel and they should have it in a couple of weeks. I said fine, thinking this would be about right for Alaska. Everything takes a while here, especially if you have to go to the mainland and have it shipped.
After a few days, I checked in to see how things were coming. "It's on the way, should be here next Saturday," I was told. Ok, fine. I called the Monday after the shipment was supposed to arrive. "Oh, I'll check and get back to you." No calls. I called again. "Um, well, I hate to tell you this, but we ordered the wrong part. We'll have to resend the order, and it'll be another two weeks." Ok, so do that, you idiots.
Two weeks later, I called again. "It's not here yet, let me see where it is." Ok. "It'll be on the next shipment!" Ok. "It didn't make this shipment, we'll try again next week." Then I left to go back to Texas for a trip. I called from Texas, and they said, "Yup, we know where it is. It'll be here on the next shipment." Fine.
I got back from Texas, and checked again. I even went to the store site to see if I could actually lay eyes on it. No dice. It wasn't there. Where is it? "We think it's in Wasilla, but we don't know. We'll call you."
At this point, it was about eight weeks after the incident, and I had had enough. I called the local branch manager and the district manager, and let them have it. The local branch manager decided to become personally involved, and he said he would get a truck to send the panel overnight. Ok, fine.
A couple of hours later, I got a message from the branch manager. Uh-oh. I called his cell phone, and he told me that they had ordered the wrong door panel AGAIN! He said he would personally scour the inventory of every branch and try to get me a panel.
The next day, he called and said that the panel had been located, and the installer would meet me at the house to install it. The installer showed up, and, of course, the panel was the wrong size. I needed a 24" panel, and they sent me a 21" panel.
That's where we stand now. I'm waiting for the original guys I first called to come out and take a look at it and see what they say. If they say they can get me a door panel in two weeks, I'm going to pull the plug on the other guys. It'll probably take me three or four attempts to actually get them to stop, since they don't seem to have any idea how to operate a phone, let alone a major builders supply store. They have absolutely no control over their supply chain, no computerized tracking system, their paperwork is a disorganized mess, and their people are nice enough, but completely incompetent.
UPDATE: the original guys I called just came out and said they could get a panel in two weeks. Sorry, S****** B******* S*****, you lose. Whoops.