On the day of the table's arrival, I had to call my roommate Amy to come help me lug the table home. It was so heavy that we had to borrow a luggage cart from one of my co-workers to get some leverage. That was the first hurdle. The second hurdle was that I had to use the building's freight elevator vs. the regular elevator, and I couldn't use it past 5 p.m. The third hurdle was that when I got to the freight elevator at 4:55 p.m., I had to have a note on letterhead from my employer stating that I was allowed to take a box out of the building (which I now know is a standard safety precaution). Thankfully one of my co-workers was nearby and ran back and forth in enough time to get me an official elevator pass.
Once on the street, we hit hurdle #4: Midtown Manhattan in rush hour. It was body-to-body and we were wheeling a 75+ lb. table down the streets of Times Square. Of course, no one was paying attention, so we just had to keep it moving. Several times we would stop moving and the table wouldn't. We couldn't even steer properly. I ran into a little kid's foot and my roommate knocked some girl in the rear. We simultaneously kept trying to hail a cab but they were all full. Even so, it is known that cabbies are reluctant to stop for people with cargo. It apparently makes their job harder.
At this point, Amy and I decided to try the bus. We were fortunate enough that a bus driver let us on and we were dropped off close to home. A few people made comments that we should have taken a cab. We politely told them that while that was a brilliant idea, we had already tried it.
Once home, we encountered hurdle #5: shimmying the table up 4 flights of steps. Once we did that we then sat down and put the table together. The legs were all screwed in tight so we set the table upright - only to find a huge crack in top! I was so mad I just wanted to kick it and throw it out the window. Our window was too small for the table to fit through, so I quietly disassembled the table and wrapped it back up. Target.com would only offer me 20% off to keep the damaged table, so I decided to ship it back. We had 3 options at that point: (1) return the table to a Target store; (2) have it picked up at the location it was shipped to; (3) drop it off at a UPS store. The first two were out because there is no Target in the vicinity and there was no way I was getting that table back to my office, so we decided to drop it off at the UPS store. It sat for over a week in our apartment while we tried to coordinate getting it to the drop-off point. Then, one day I came home and Amy had somehow slid the table down the steps and wheeled it back to the UPS store. I bought her roses. Later on, when I decided to order a different dining table, I had it shipped to a friend's house who lives a block away and has a front desk attendant. Ahhh, a front desk attendant. One can only dream!
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