When a store stops being a store, but then again becomes one

Priscilla and I bought a new television Friday afternoon. We have a 50-inch Samsung, but it is four years old and developed a brown hockeystick bar about three inches wide and two feet long. And when the TV is first turned on, almost half the screen is black. So we needed a new one.

We went to Best Buy. I probably would have gone to Wal-Mart, but I wasn’t driving.

A salesman asked if he could be of assistance. I was prepared to say, “My wife says we need a big-a$$ television.” Priscilla had told me she wanted a bigger one, and I figured since most buyers of big-a$$ TVs are men, the statement might be found humorous and the salesman would laugh.

But Priscilla said, “We want to look at TVs.”

The salesman gestured at the big-a$$ back wall filled with big-a$$ televisions and said the store had quite a few to choose from. He talked a lot. He mentioned a bunch of stuff Priscilla and I were not interested in; so much stuff I don’t remember what any of it was.

We settled on a 60-inch … Virgo? Vertigo? Something like that, and the salesman got two checkout men to take to TV to a kiosk of cash registers. There was some talk going on, but my back hurt, so I sat on a pony wall. (I didn’t know it was a pony wall until Priscilla said, “If your back hurts, why don’t you sit on that pony wall?” So I did.)

In all of the talk, I heard something about the warehouse not having that model in stock. I thought: In stock? It’s sitting right there. What’s this in-stock business? I stood and walked to the conversation. Turned out, if we had the TV delivered, we would not get the one right in front of us, but one from the warehouse.

Priscilla and I decided we could get the thing out of her car. “We don’t have to carry it in the house,” she said. “We can leave it in the garage until the installation people get to the house.”

That sounded good to me. After all, right here in front of us is the TV we looked at, the TV whose price we are about to add to a credit card. We haven’t seen the warehouse TV, which Best Buy doesn’t have any of anyway.

So the place where we were buying a TV (a TV store) but wouldn’t get the TV we bought if we had it delivered (from a warehouse) once more became a TV store when we decided to skip delivery (from a warehouse). Got it?

I have to tell you, a 60-inch television is a big-a$$ TV.

Oh. The salesman said 3-5 years is the expected life of a TV today. Ain’t progress great?