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Next time, get the trolley FIRST.

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  • Next time, get the trolley FIRST.

    This is the tale of how I managed to get my new speakers home.

    I hadn't quite realised how heavy the set would be. So, after paying for it, the salesmonkey helpfully left it in a shopping trolley for me to collect. Which would be fine, if I was just going to take the lift down to the car park.

    I don't have a car. I was going to take it to the train station instead.

    The first part of the journey went well. I piled my other purchases on top of the box, and managed to lift the whole shebang and maintain my grip on it.

    Then I met the escalator down from the computer shop to ground level. The handrails were not wide enough for me to continue carrying the speaker box. Some wild gymnastics later, I have a bag of computer components and a very large box of speakers... on the ground at the foot of the escalator.

    Lifting speakers from the ground is a heck of a lot harder than lifting them off a counter.

    It was immediately clear that I wasn't going to be able to reach the metro station, let alone hump it up to the main railway station. Plan B was to get it to my office, where I could safely leave it while I arranged alternative transport. (Plan C would have been to hire a taxi.) Fortunately for me, the office was actually closer than the metro station.

    The shopping centre (I refuse to call such a thing outside America a "mall") has shiny polished floors. It's nice and easy to push a big heavy box across a polished floor. It's not so easy to lift it over the entrance rug and the tarmac separating the shopping centre and the office building. The box was supposed to have handles, but I had to use my knife to make them even vaguely usable.

    Once inside the office building, more nice shiny polished floors awaited. Good, nice and easy to push it along again. Shame about the quarter-inch seam/step at one of the doorways on the way to the lift, which I didn't notice was a step (rather than just a seam) until it tripped the box over.

    Finally, the box is safely hauled into the secure part of the office - at least, the part where you have to be either an employee, or a security guard, or authorised by one of those, to reach. Safe enough for a couple of hours. I promptly collapse into my desk seat to recover from the intense exertion.

    Some time later, I arrive back at the office with my heavy-duty luggage trolley. Yep, should have had that ready before going into the shop. Getting the box home using that was relatively straightforward...

    Oh, who am I kidding. It made getting the box home possible. There were still plenty of snags on my path.

    Such as the non-working lifts at the main railway station.

    And the propensity of the railway to put insufficient carriages on trains immediately after the official rush hour has ended - though at least they were low-floor ones, which made life easier.

    And the fact that it is a little difficult to adequately secure a box that is more than twice as long in one dimension than in the others against the stresses of running with a luggage trolley, in order to catch the aforementioned low-floor train.

    And the fact that the lifts at my local station stink of stale piss. But at least they work.

    And the fact that the soundcard I got to go with these speakers doesn't work as advertised. But that's another tale...

  • #2
    O_o

    Wow! I'm glad they made it home for you in one piece!
    Dull women have immaculate homes.

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