Getting More Than I Bargained For

Earlier this year, I decided to finally bite the bullet and shell out some dough¹ for my first lot of bookcases, nine years after I moved into my apartment. In addition to the imaginable space constraints of city living, some bright young architect must have decided concrete shoeboxes look best with walls that are broken into odd-sized panels that do not sit flush with each other. To maximise the use of available wall space, every bookcase has to be of custom dimensions and, being Mr Mean, the very thought of the additional expense compared to buying ready-made pieces suited me poorly. Only when I was caught between crooked blank walls (not by design, but only a reflection of the quality of Meriton construction) and an ever-growing mountain of archive boxes packed with (predominantly brand new) books that I can't stop buying but didn't read – for the simple reason of “out of sight, out of mind” – did it occur to me that it had merit as a value proposition.

I was happy to discover that Knotts Pine, a store that markets itself as “(selling) quality furniture at the best value prices”, can build a limited range of styles of pine bookcases to order, so I put detailed specifications (nothing fancy, just carefully set out dimensions after measuring several dozen items in my book, movie and CD collections as well as my index finger after soaking it in hot water to allow for possible swelling) on paper and requested a quote for the four bookcases/media shelves.

That was a bit over three months ago. This morning, the order was finally considered completed and delivered, with my having arrived at a satisfactory resolution with the store management after tens of phone calls, three separate deliveries (and a few that were promised but never actually happened), and some on-site repair work by one of their tradesmen on staff.

I now have five, not four, bookcases in all — three of which are as ordered, another one being an unexpected twin, and the last of them is, um, “a little bit special”. For the total price I paid, not taking into account the amount of time spent chasing the order up and my shrink's fee, these came at a bargain.

Thanks, guys.

¹ I almost confused ‘dough’ with ‘dole’, which would not have been surprising given my employment status, except that I'm not getting the benefits. Instead, I'm spending my ill-begotten gains from my being-paid-to-look-busy-so-they-have-staff-numbers-to-shed stint at a large Australian telco.