The Not-So-Smart TV Purchase

I work on the receiving team of an electronics retailer. We are also who people see to collect larger items, mainly televisions. It’s not uncommon for people to underestimate how much space their TV needs and try to collect it in a vehicle much too small. It’s recommended to transport them upright to prevent potential damage to the screen in transit; some people choose to ignore this, and others choose to come back with an appropriate vehicle another time or arrange delivery.

At the end of the day, it’s their choice; they’ve paid for the item so they can do what they want with it. I’ve seen people do plenty of stupid things to avoid having to come back or pay a delivery fee, but one guy takes the cake.

As soon as my colleague and I see his vehicle, it’s doubtful the TV will fit.

Us: “Sir, shall we do some measurements of the box to check if it will fit in your car?”

Customer: “No need. It’ll definitely fit.”

His first plan is to set the television on the floor in the rear, just behind the driver and passenger seats. We get the TV to his car and then see that he has his two toddler children in their car seats in the back seat, which is not a good start as I assume there would be some safety issue at play. However, we’re fairly confident the TV won’t fit there anyway, so we decide to humour him and prove it to hopefully end the silliness.

He has to move the driver and passenger seats a long way forward to even get the TV in place and then, sure enough, it’s too long and the back doors won’t close.

Sadly, it doesn’t end there.

Customer: “I’ll just have to lay it down to get it in.”

My customer service facade drops a little as I can’t comprehend where he thinks it will go. It might get in if he didn’t have the kids in the back seat and could fold the seat down and lay it through the boot into the back seat, but that’s not an option, and it’s not his plan.

His idea is so ridiculous that it didn’t even occur to me as a possibility: he’s going to lay the TV down across the back seat, on top of the kids in their car seats!

After a moment of shock, we regain our composure and point out to him:

Us: “Sir, if it doesn’t fit lengthways across the floor, it’s still not going to fit lengthways across.”

With a more reasonable person I might have tried the tactic of how much danger he was putting his kids in, but a more reasonable person wouldn’t have had this idea in the first place.

It takes some convincing, but we’re eventually able to get him to realise that it will not fit. He briefly contemplates the idea of laying it down inside the car the other way, with one end on top of the kids in the backseat and the other end resting in the front seat headrests, but he rules this idea out as it would be hitting him in the head.

I think it’s finally over, but not quite.

He decides now that things might be easier if the kids weren’t in the car and he could fold the back seat down. But instead of deciding to take them home and come back with an empty vehicle, he comments:

Customer: “If only my wife had come with me, I could leave the kids with her, take the TV home, and come back for them.”

After this comment, he looks hopefully at us, as though he’s expecting us to offer to watch his kids for him. We do not offer, of course, and remain silent, although I really want to point out that it wouldn’t make a difference to him if he took the kids home first and came back for the TV or took the TV home first and came back for the kids; it’s the same number of trips.

After we fail to offer to babysit, he sadly has one more brilliant idea.

Customer: “I’ll take the car seats out, fold the backseat down to fit the TV in, and then drive home with the kids in their car seats, which will be sitting on the passenger side in the front.”

Us: “That will be very unsafe for the kids and, honestly, is a terrible idea.”

He’s unsure and seems to want to try it, but after we continue to tell him not to, he finally has one genuinely good idea:

Customer: “I’ll call my wife to see what she thinks.”

Fortunately, she very quickly shut down his terrible idea before he even finished telling it to her and told him to bring the kids home and go back for the TV later. I was very happy when he decided to take her advice and left with his kids safely secured in their seats. If people had to pass a test before being allowed to become parents, he would have had no chance.