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Tuesday, December 27, 2011

A grievance against the elves

Elfin Grievance Form -- NP123

Date: December 26, 2011

Grievance filed by: Amy M. (aka The 4th Frog)

Nature of grievance: 

___ Shoddy worksmanship   ___ Poor packaging   ___ Wrong item sent   _X__ Other

Please provide details of the complaint:

Our son Charlie received a basketball shooting game for Christmas. He was thrilled. Unfortunately, the elves in the sporting goods department must have slipped the box into Santa's bag before Santa could notice that they didn't actually assemble the game. Luckily, Charlie was kept plenty busy with his other Christmas gifts that he didn't seem to mind that the gift was still in the box.

The day after Christmas, Charlie opened the box, assuming that he would just need to unfold the game and it would be ready to go. Ha! If only we'd been so lucky. The box was filled with no less than 247 individual pieces that required significant assembly.

There were more than a dozen metal pieces that had to be put together to create the frame. To the elves' credit, these were all clearly marked and actually matched up with the numbers included in the instruction booklet. If only the bolts were as clearly marked. Yes, they were separated and labeled initially, but once the package was opened it was nearly impossible to tell the difference between a #24 bolt and a #25 bolt.

I started the assembly with Charlie helping me. That lasted about 17 minutes. Then it was Annie to the rescue. She and I matched metal poles and nuts and bolts and washers, hoping that the entire contraption would not collapse on top of us. Annie kept saying "Aren't there people who get paid to do this?" She is her GoGo's granddaughter!

Mike called us to lunch and we emerged from the basement, not yet finished, amazed to find that we had been working on this little project for more than 2 hours!

After lunch, we had to tighten up the bolts, install the hoops, hang the backboard, install the scoring system -- and oh, yeah -- find batteries, something else those elves forgot to do. All told (some unscrewing and correcting of erroneous building), it took us about 3-1/2 hours to put Charlie's gift together. I'm thinking the elves could have had it done in 45 minutes or so.

I suppose it was a character building experience. It was some mother-daughter bonding time. In the end, what really matters is that Charlie is having fun with his gift. And so are the rest of us. 

But, I do think that someone might want to have a word with those sporting goods elves.

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3 comments:

Beth said...

I was thrilled to death the elves didn't leave anything complicated to put together this year! If that was in my house I'm sure my husband and I would still be arguing over it and there would be no game to play. Hope Charlie appreciates all your hard work getting it ready to go!

Beth said...

I was thrilled to death the elves didn't leave anything complicated to put together this year! If that was in my house I'm sure my husband and I would still be arguing over it and there would be no game to play. Hope Charlie appreciates all your hard work getting it ready to go!

Julie, Amy's Mom said...

I didn't have anything the elves didn't assemble, but I do STILL have a mini digital photo frame on a keychain from 3 years ago that still isn't loaded with the 1st picture.

And I am still trying to figure out the "Starter Word" program on my new laptop, from Oct 28. I HAVE DECIDED THAT THEY DELIBERATELY MADE IT A VERY DIFFERENT CONFIGURATION FROM THE TYPICAL WORD FORMATS JUST TO CONVINCE YOU TO BUY THE FULL PROGRAM. I spent 3 hours yesterday trying to type single addresses into the labels template nd NEVER got it done. Then I tried to save a letter onto a disk, and cannot the the site to use. Annnnnnd I have done both of these tasks multiple times before on other computers.

Maybe my elves are the TECHNICAL elves and they are on strike.