Bad Chair Day

Alissa Grosso

Jun 26, 2024

It’s 10 a.m. on an impossibly hot Friday in June, and the Home Depot customer service counter is teeming with women renting vans to move secondhand furniture. Two spots down from me a woman here to rent a Home Depot van excitedly shows the Home Depot employee a photo of the patio furniture she’s going to pick up.

“I just need some new cushions,” she explains.

I have one of the Penske high roof cargo vans reserved. (The Home Depot cargo van isn’t going to cut it for my task.) There’s been an issue getting the van to the store in time. If I can hang out for an hour they think they can have one here by 11.

The reason I’m waiting on the larger van is because our bounty isn’t going to fit in a standard size van. Finding a set of 8 affordably priced dining chairs in a style we like proved difficult. Then Ron found a set at a local auction company, but there were 12, not 8. Secondhand shoppers can’t be choosers. It’s all good though because we ended up getting a good price on the set. We reason that with 4 extra we can just use the 8 that are in the best condition and keep the other 4 in the basement.

12 modern dining chairs in the back of a cargo van.

Before we bid, Ron got a shipping quote from the auction company. It would be $1800 to ship 12 chairs 20 miles. The Penske van is a fraction of that cost and by 11:15 it’s finally made it to the store.

Beside me at the counter is a different sort of savvy shopper. A man has two air conditioner units on a flatbed cart. He’s stocking up for the heatwave, and he’s found a cheaper price online. Barcodes are scanned and websites are checked so that he can get his price-matched deal.

My customer service agent braves the heat to go check the mileage on my van. A woman comes up behind me and asks if I am being waited on. I explain about the mileage check. It turns out she is here to rent a van too. She’s picking up a mattress from a coworker.

With the air conditioning in the rented van blasting I drive to the auction house. I’m lucky. The “guys” have just returned from lunch and help me load all 12 chairs into the van. They fit perfectly.

At home I brave the heat to carry our 12 chairs into the house. The goal is to open and shut the front door quickly to not let in too much heat. Soon there are chairs everywhere in our dining and living rooms.

Our old dining room table can accomodate 6 chairs. It’s due to be replaced when we finally find the perfect one. For now we remove the 6 old chairs and replace them with 6 shiny new (to us) chairs. That leaves us with 12 chairs that need to be transported to the basement. This is beginning to sound like a math word problem.

Have I mentioned that the stairs to our basement are spiral stairs? They are not especially conducive to moving furniture. Thankfully there’s another way. Our basement is above ground in the back with a sliding glass door. I can walk the chairs one by one from the front door to the back door. It’s a longer walk than you would imagine, and it’s still very hot out.

In the meantime, there’s patio furniture to be moved outside. It’s presently occupying the basement real estate we need for chair storage. We delayed putting it out because of our robin neighbors, but they’ve all flown the nest. So we move the patio pieces outside.

When the sun dips behind the mountain it’s cool enough (but not really cool out) to move the extra chairs downstairs the long way. Are the neighbors watching? What must they think seeing me carry chair after chair out the front door and around the side of the house?

We have so many chairs. Prior to picking up our new ones we did a count. It’s an absurd amount, enough to invite everyone we know over for one epic game of musical chairs. We need to get rid of some chairs. Meanwhile one of us, Ron, can’t sit comfortably in any chair. We need, more than anything, to get him better.

— Alissa