We had decided that our dining room chairs were a bit tired and needed to be replaced. Not terribly old, Italian and rather dear as I recall, but the covers were going and mending was not an option - not that it often is with modern household 'durables'.
So off to John Lewis in Kingston, where we fairly soon lighted on something which we thought suited. Very much the same, as it happens, as the standard issue, lower ranks chair in the Civil Service when I joined in the early 1970s. Very comfortable they were too with a pleasing amount of give when you wanted to stretch a bit. The higher ranks chair might have been grander but it was certainly less comfortable. With the chair snapped above being a domesticated version.
There were not a lot of floorwalkers about, but eventually we got one and he led us off to his workstation. Sorry sir, out of stock. None in the system, but there might be some more for Christmas. Not good, and we failed to agree on an alternative. So I thought, why not buy the two off the floor and see if it is worth waiting? Get hold of our chap again, who does not know whether that is on, so he summons a senior floor walker. Who is all very brisk and efficient and explains that they do not sell stuff off the floor unless the line has been discontinued, which this one had not. But perhaps sir would like to go online and get his name on the waiting list. But be quick when the call comes, you never know how many people might be waiting. Just like an estate agent patter.
Some time later, back home, I go online to get on the waiting list and find that I could buy them there and then, despite what I had been told in the shop. So I did. Opting not to have them assemble the chairs for me. Opting not to have the chairs routed through the Harrods distribution operation in Peckham, all the better to impress the neighbours. £26.75 plus VAT. But I did pay a few quid extra to have a four hour delivery slot, rather than a twelve hour delivery slot.
The next thing was a missed call from John Lewis. When I did a 1471 call back, I quickly found myself in the John Lewis call centre system and not long after that I was speaking to a person. Who seemed to take forever to work out who I was in the absence of an order number. Far longer than it would have taken me to get taken to my orders online. And then he told me that he had no idea who had called me but that it was probably something to do with delivery. We agreed to let the matter rest there. I wondered whether the chairs were out of stock after all.
But no, on the due day, more phone calls (this time answered) and more texts, and a big van turned up very shortly after the start of our four hour window, and in no time at all we had three large boxes in our hallway. Not very flatpack at all - which I would have worked out for myself had I bothered to think about the snap above a bit. How could you break the frame down without leaving an unsightly join. Not to mention a join in the tube being a point of serious structural weakness.
Lots of packing though, two to the box. I might say that I got better at getting the packing off as the day wore on. Packing which had involved at least two packers as there were two different ways of winding the tape which held the white foam on.
Made in China, so given that it was not flatpack, shipping from the other side of the world must have been a good chunk of the price.
Fitting was not much more difficult, although I did get better at that too.
The only catch was that on two of the chairs, one of the four lugs onto which you bolted the seat had been welded on crooked and had I to resort to the trusty mole wrench to bend them back into line; slightly uneasy that I would snap the weld by so doing, but, in the event, all was well.
And in not much time at all, I had the first two assembled.
It helped that I had remembered from my carpentry days, that when one was fitting things together, get all the screws properly located in their holes before you tighten any of them up - otherwise the last one is apt not to fit.
Six copies of the instructions, short and unread. Plus the mole wrench.
Some of the wear on the outgoing chairs. In its favour, before it cracks, the plastic does wipe. While the covers on the new chairs will neither wipe nor wash. We shall see how we get on with spilt food, wine, beer and so forth.
Took a break in the middle of the day and then did the last four. Not a big deal at all.
The cull of the surplus from the four tubular steel and the twelve traditional wood - including the three in the roof and two in the garage - will probably take rather longer.
PS 1: maybe the way things are going, manufacturers will build special locks (as it were) into their stuff which you need a special tool to unlock. A special tool only accessible to the official flat pack assembly men employed by your shop. So paying the flat pack assembly charge is really just the same as paying another slice of VAT, this one on top of the sticker price.
PS 2: I notice at reference 1 a meal at the Kingston version of Cappadocia: I believe the same people as our relatively recently opened one in Epsom. Also the purchase of Lincolnshire Poacher at Waitrose: can't be long after that that Neal's Yard Dairy kicked in.
PS 3: the driver told us that he worked out of a distribution centre right next to the old Brooklands racetrack at Weybridge. A few minutes with Bing and gmaps run it down to the orange spot on the snap above, with the main line to Waterloo to its left, the racetrack and the River Wey to its right. The much bigger shed for Amazon, below and to its right. The big white patch. An electricity substation, presumably the same sort of thing as the one at Malden Rushett, above and to its left. The big brown patch.
Just to be sure. A discrete sort of place which does not advertise itself loudly in either Bing or gmaps, but you can find it easily enough if you know that it is there.
I don't suppose John Lewis really want customers turning up at the door demanding action about a bent lug or a lost bolt - but I was struck by the amount of information that is freely available to bad people - by what is being becoming quite a big price to pay for living in an open society - and giving free rein to the tech giants.
Zooming in to the sub-station.
References
Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/08/shopping-in-kingston.html. The Italian job, rather longer ago than I had thought and I don't seem to have bothered to record their actual arrival. Clearly far much too much other stuff going in those far-off days to bother about trivia like chairs.
Reference 2: https://www.nealsyarddairy.co.uk/.
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