Friday Evening Post: Nice Grudge , but can you hold it long enough?

I don’t give a shit if somebody wants to shop at Nebraska Furniture Mart or not.  Or anywhere else for that matter.  I sure as hell don’t want to hear about it though.

Especially at 7:30 in the morning.

I get to work at 7 each morning.  I have always liked the 7-4 shift.  I can get a good hour of work in before Lumberg comes in and starts chatting.

Obama.  Huskers. Global Warming. God and church and stuff.

Some mornings though, other people are also there before 8AM.  They come in at 7 to get a head start on their day of talking about whatever inane thing spills from their partially conscious skulls.

Normally, this is white noise for me.  But sometimes (like this morning) some words will grab my attention.  The topic is always stupid, but sometimes it's so stupid, I can't ignore it.

Is this really what you’re talking about right now, I’ll ask myself at a reasonable volume.

For a while this morning, I thought the company had installed a new office drone monitoring system or something.  It turns out the low pitched whining noise I was hearing was a woman explaining why she doesn’t go to Nebraska Furniture Mart anymore.

Again.  Don’t care.  But then the words “Since 1985” droned their way through my ears and into my brain.

Woah.  Nebraska Furniture Mart did something to this poor woman in 1985 that she’s never quite recovered from.  It must've been horrible!

She was wronged.  Big time.  This is a 30 year feud that one of the parties doesn't know about.

And you know what?  I don't blame her.  After what they did. 

Of course I didn't know what it was but I had to hear the story now.  What could possibly burn so bright for so long.

Now I’m eavesdropping.  I’ve stopped working.  It’s close enough to 8 AM anyway.  Lumberg will be here any second.  I might as well hear the story about how The Nebraska Furniture Mart set her kids on fire or punched her grandma or whatever it was ...

"So I ordered this lamp from them," Droney began.  I still held out hope about faulty wiring in the lamp that burned down the orphanage while the NFM Employees roasted marshmallows and ignored her pleas to help save the children.  They just stood there singing songs while she begged for mercy, I figured.

"Anyway, the shade for the lamp in the picture was corrugated,"  Uh oh.  This is turning into a 1 year grudge tops.  Maybe it wasn't that the lampshade was the wrong style.  Let's just let her finish.

"When I got the lamp, the shade was smooth.  Not at all what I ordered," the lady bitched.

Seriously?  Maybe they wouldn't refund her money and then they trashed her credit or something.  I guess that would piss me off.

"They said, I could return the lamp, but there'd be a restocking fee."

"I demanded they get me the shade like in the photo. They said they couldn't do that.  Never again I tell you.  Never a-fucking-gain."

Ok she didn't really say "A-fucking-gain" but she was pretty pissed off anew talking about this thing that happened involving an incorrect style of lamp shade from the time of the Reagan Administration. The person she was telling the story to was like "Yeah.  Figures. Corporate greed, man."

So yeah, I usually get in at 7 AM to get a head start on some work.