As I sit here typing this, I'm moaning because it hurts to keep my arms high enough to reach the keyboard and to hold my head up. Why am I in so much pain , you might wonder? Well, I wrestled with the Little People Racin' Ramps Garage that we got today for Miss Charlotte Stinker Pants. It started off easily enough. In fact, I said "oh Charlotte, we'll delay your nap by a few minutes so that you can play with this once I get it all put together." Looking like a Norman Rockwell painting, Charlotte assisted me in using the screwdriver to put her toy together.
The happy scene ended shortly thereafter when it came time to stick the ramps in. The ramps come in 4 pieces. I could get one in its proper position at any given time. After 45 minutes I realized Charlotte was still awake and decided to take her up for a nap both so that she could sleep and so that I could say the words that I really wanted to say instead of softer alternatives. 20 more minutes, and at least 3 strained muscles later - I got all the ramps in. Then it said I had to put a screw from the bottom of one of the ramps into the body of the garage - easy enough. Except the screw holes didn't even come close to matching up. Not to be deterred, I resorted to brute force to make them match up. Whew. Almost done - just one more step. Attach the handle - which screws into three separate columns. Hmm, why isn't this fitting? Why is it that once I get it on two columns and then try to attach it to the third the whole thing pops off? Well lookie there - one of the columns is totally contorted! That is clearly the reason why the ramps wouldn't snap together. Damn you Fisher Price and your snap together parts!!!
Any of you who have ever assembled these "one time, easy assembly" toys know that the snapping sound when you get two pieces together sounds like angels singing. Except... if you ever want to get them apart again. So I tried to disassemble. I utterly failed. How in the world did Fisher Price sell me such a contorted piece of junk???? Oh, loookie here - a customer service number on the instructions. Let's call.
Wendy answered. She's from Buffalo and sounds exactly like my sister in law. She couldn't have been nicer and agreed to send me a full refund. I bought the contorted piece of junk from Toys R Us, but of course since it is "one time, easy assembly" I can't unassemble it and therefore I can't return it to Toys R Us. She fully understood and agreed. They were sending me a prepaid shipping label and picking up the shipping. Wendy felt terrible about the whole situation, especially when I told her about Charlotte's joyful playing with the tow truck. If they had any in stock, she would send me one right out she promised, but they are out of stock. She apologized no fewer than 15 times and proceeded to take down my information. They'll email me the return label.
Since she was being so nice, and since I had a sort of fondness for Fisher Price because they were so accomodating, I decided to try and disassemble the thing so that I could fit it in a smaller box and save them some shipping. I checked with Wendy first, since it was pretty likely I'd break a snappy tab piece during the disassembly. She said it wasn't a problem since it sounded like this thing was so contorted that they wouldn't be able to fix it. We said our fond farewells and I set about disassembling the thing.
The screws came out easily enough. The ramps even unsnapped with only a few drops of blood escaping from my knuckles. Then I set about to unscrew the "floor support." Hmm. Maybe instead of fitting on this way, it fits on upside down?? Well lookie there - that does look better! Hmm, that horribly contorted post seems to stand upright when that floor support is screwed on upside down. Interesting. Let's check the diagram.
Oh, so it turns out upside down is actually right side up! And exactly 4 minutes later - without any strength required - we have a fully functional, uncontorted Fisher Price Racin' Ramps Garage. I feel like I should call Wendy back and let her know so that she can sleep tonight. But I'm too horrified with my engineering skills to admit it (by the way as I type this I am watching Charlotte get surprisingly close to climbing out of her crib, but blog first I always say!). At least I did not give her my alum.mit.edu address, right???
Now some of you might dispute the validity of the point I awarded to myself. But... we do have a functional Racin' Ramps Garage do we not??? It was a hard fought battle that ended in a draw.
And now to go rescue the little turkey from her cage. um, crib. Sorry.
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3 comments:
i don't know why but this post reminds me of the time I came home to Baker to find you on the floor, screwdriver in hand with your computer in pieces around you. I don't remember the outcome of that - and think you were just fine dealing with it - but that's the memory that flashed up as I read!
funny how now it's fisher price toys instead of computers. And I think you can keep your point.
Yeah - I'm much better dismantling and putting back together computers. Fisher Price is apparently too complex.
Binary code? No problem. Snap-together plastic parts? Her undoing. :)
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