{"id":7448,"date":"2023-09-03T02:36:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-03T02:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7448"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:47","slug":"buying-a-hutch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7448","title":{"rendered":"BUYING A HUTCH"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thursday afternoon I drove over to a local used furniture store ready to commit to an old hutch I had looked at a few days prior. I had decided it would look perfect in my newly renovated office space in the Sardinia church.<\/p>\n\n\n

Upon my arrival, I was relieved to see the piece was still there. The owner of the place assured me it was a good buy and reminded me that it was two pieces – making it easy to move.<\/p>\n\n\n

He asked me if I was planning to haul it in my minivan parked outside the front window. I said, “Yup. The seats are out and it’s ready to go.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

He said, “It ain’t gonna fit in that. The top piece is too tall.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

Now I have an artist’s eye and I am pretty good at sizing up spaces and I have spent a lot of time packing stuff into the back of minivans. “I think it will fit.”<\/p>\n\n\n

“It won’t fit.”<\/p>\n\n\n

He brought a tape measure and I proceeded to prove my spatial intelligence beyond a doubt.<\/p>\n\n\n

Next, he says, “Well, you need to pay for it before we move it. I don’t want you to break the glass and then back out of the sale. That would be expensive for me to replace.”<\/p>\n\n\n

Really? First you question my judgment and now you question my character? (Not to mention my physical coordination!)<\/p>\n\n\n

I cannot even imagine doing something so weaselly, but I saved my breath and just replied, “Of course, let’s take care of that first.”<\/p>\n\n\n

After handing over the money, I asked, “Can I get a receipt for that?”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

He didn’t say a word but tapped his handwritten sign that said “All Sales are Final”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

Good grief! I am not going to try to bring it back next week. I just want a receipt to give to the church treasurer. Reluctantly, he wrote me a receipt.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

As I drove away – with the hutch stowed safely in the back of my van, glass intact – I laughed a bit. I could have fumed that the salesman had questioned my character, my competence, and my common sense.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

I could have said, “I’m never going back to that <\/b><\/i>place.”<\/p>\n\n\n

Instead, I felt prompted to extend some grace. Why should I take as insult any of his words when he doesn’t know me from Adam?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

After all, without a doubt, each of the man’s impolite precautions was based on bad interactions with customers in the past who were not <\/b><\/i>me. And each one had brought misery enough that he didn’t care to risk a replay.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

I am guessing that now that he knows me a bit, he might give me more benefit of the doubt the next time I am in his shop.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday afternoon I drove over to a local used furniture store ready to commit to an old hutch I had looked at a few days prior. I had decided it would look perfect in my newly renovated office space in the Sardinia church. Upon my arrival, I was relieved to see the piece was still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7450,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7448\/revisions\/7450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}