Windows, what?!?!

I feel like I need to preface this story a bit. First of all, my husband is a very kind, genuine, patient man. In the 21 years that we have been together he has literally raised his voice to me once. If you truly know me, you know that there were plenty of opportunities that it would have probably been warranted, but he didn’t.

His power comes more in the form of reflected assholiness. Now he doesn’t always mean it and again, it’s never at me. It’s always when his patience is pushed beyond the limit, and he’s hitting a brick wall. With that being said I thought getting a second window quote on a Wednesday night, at 6pm would be a dandy idea.

Now mind you, I’ve gotten one quote already. He wasn’t here for that one. We know we need new windows. We’ve known it for years. We are ready to pull the trigger and have the money. We do not want to finance windows, we will be paying cash. We are an easy sell. We don’t need the horse and pony show, the heat test, or the efficiency of our current windows graded. I need some measurements and a quote.

I was very clear on the phone when confirming this appointment. I even said, “we don’t need the horse and pony show.” The scheduler laughed but apparently failed to write that down.

My husband worked all day and got home about 10 minutes before the very nice salesman showed up. So no dinner, or real time to unwind. This was going to be a no brainer mix for disaster. The salesman was a very nice guy, talked about his dogs, his kids and the love for his job. I mean if you wanted to hire a salesman he was good. I walked him around the house so he could measure all the windows.

We sat at the table and I figured we were almost done. I thought wrong…. About 1/4 of the way through I could feel my husband shifting in the chair. I looked over and y’all he was literally holding his hand over his mouth as if he was trying to fight the demon from escaping. Now I didn’t want to say, “babe you’re being an ass” so instead I said a much more subtle, “are you ok?” He caught himself and bought me a few more minutes.

I reminded the salesman that he didn’t need to sell us on the windows. We know we need them. We just need the quote. I wish he would have got it but unfortunately he did not. So as he was going over the importance of argon gas for the second or third time my husband snapped.

He was as polite as I could expect but he explained that he has been at work all day, just got home, he was exhausted and frankly didn’t want to hear anymore about the windows. I tried my best to spread my cheerful on top of the shit sandwich that the poor guy just got served but to be fair there was plenty of warning.

He finally got the hint and asked us what we thought his quote would be and if we guessed within $500 he’d buy us McDonalds. There was no way I was throwing out a number. That’s like going to garage sale where they say, make me an offer. I don’t want to make you a damn offer. Tell me what you want for it and I’ll decided if I want it.

Well he turns his paper around and I swear to God if we had video of our faces we would go viral. Thirty two thousand dollars…I laughed and explained that although I’m sure his windows are amazing that is more than double of what our original quote was and there was no was in hell I was spending that kind of money on windows. Now of course he offered to knock some off if we did advertising. I can advertise the heck out of something, but unless you’re gonna knock off 50% it’s time for you to pack up.

Chuck thanked him for all the information but just confirmed what I had said. Apparently it isn’t concrete until the husband says no, which always pisses me off because everyone knows it’s truly the wife that decides. Poor guy packed up his traveling window bag and hit the door.

We are getting new windows but we will not be putting the Cadillacs in this Pinto.