How I Outsmarted the Algorithm and Found a Human Being at Lowe’s

Today, I embarked on a noble and deeply aggravating quest: buying a refrigerator.
I knew exactly which model I wanted — the research was done, the decision made — and I almost bought it online. But Lowe’s website, in its infinite wisdom, offered no civilized scheduling options. Buy today, and you’re rewarded with delivery tomorrow, whether you like it or not. I needed four more days — a minor concession to the gods of logistics, apparently beyond the website’s feeble imagination.

So I drove to the Lowe’s on Skypark in Torrance, muttering curses at the indignities of modern retail. I marched straight to the Refunds desk, where two clerks stood idle, marooned in a sea of boredom. I said, with the slight guilt of a man about to break protocol, “I know I’m supposed to go to Appliances and hunt down a salesperson, but can you help me?”

And then — like a choir of angels tuning up in aisle five — one of them smiled and said, “Well, since Appliances is busy, I’ll help you.”
Her words were a warm poultice slapped onto my stress-riddled soul, the perfect antidote to the week’s ordeal: a refrigerator emergency caused by my seven-year-old Kenmore, which froze over, sneered at my hair dryer attack on its blocked freezer drain, and essentially told me to go pound sand.

Within ten minutes, the deal was done. I floated out of Lowe’s light as a helium balloon, buoyed by the rarest of modern mercies: competent, unsolicited human kindness.
Yes, by the time my contractor widens the kitchen doorway to accommodate this new metallic beast, and I pay for the fridge, warranty, and the luxury of hauling my dead Kenmore to appliance hell, I’ll be out two thousand dollars.
But for a fleeting, golden moment, I remembered that the world, battered as it is, can still be shockingly decent.