Thankful for the $50 fee

For a couple months now , Mike and I have been looking for a small secretary desk to put in our living room where I can set up a place to store and pay bills. Our current system has us usually placing incoming mail on the dining room table. From there most junk mail goes to the trash while bills and anything of importance gets moved ( when the table is being set for dinner) to the kitchen counter where it stays until I move the " stack" back to the table to figure out what to do with non bills and pay bills. As you can imagine, this is not the best system and ,though it does not happen very often, there is always the chance of things getting lost. Thankfully I am pretty used to what is due when so if something does get misplaced I usually catch it. Anyway, this system is getting more and more nerve racking and the kids can be careless about placing things on the kitchen counter so a couple months ago when it took me an hour to go through the stack and take out the junk mail that never got thrown away , I started to complain. Mike has never liked this set up and was glad to talk about change. A small secretary would be awesome, it was agreed and so we were looking to buy one. This is when we realized that small secretary desks are not readily available anymore.What we did find was made of flimsy particle board and looked like it would crumble under the weight of the bills.Others were made simply for looks and didn't even have any room to put a box of envelopes in them. We broadened our looking range to include small desks but still nothing acceptable was found. Finally Tuesday night we went to Ashley furniture. Believe it or not they had four different secretary desks and they were cheaper than we expected. Though three were the flimsy, no room for a box of envelopes type, one had extra drawers and even though it was also made of particle board and was more expensive it would work. I was excited that we had found something that would work and we called the sales lady who had greeted us earlier. It was then that we were informed that Ashley had no backroom stock. This meant that everything had to be ordered and took two to three weeks to come on.... We could live with this. Then we were informed that delivery would be fifty dollars for this item. (only thirty additional for each subsequent item so if we wanted the dining room chairs that we also looked at it was wise to order them too) I responded that we would not need delivery and would either fit it into our Aztek or borrow a truck. The sales lady then informed us that we would either have to pick up the secretary desk at their warehouse ( 45 -60 minutes away)or pay to have it delivered as their store did not offer pick up. " So what you are telling me" I asked "is that unless I drive to your warehouse, I have to pay the $50( for the first item ) fee?" "yes" she replied like I was an idiot for even asking. " then actually" I replied......" the price is $50 more than marked?" She looked dumbfounded but then replied "yes you will have $50 added on" "OK" I replied "we'll think about it" and we left. Once in the car Mike and I discussed how we hated to be forced to pay this ridiculous fee when we would gladly pick up our merchandise at the store a couple blocks from our home, but how these secretary desks were rare and this one had more room and what should we do ? We decided to check a couple places the next day, one a consignment furniture store and another an unfinished wood store. The consignment store had nothing but the unfinished wood store had a few things that might interest us, the man told Mike on the phone. The only problem was that the store closed at five o'clock so I would have to meet Mike there after work. So last night I met Mike and we went. Wow was I impressed ! first of all, everything was made of wood..... not particle board. Yes, we would have to stain anything we bought but the prices were the same as those for the flimsy stuff at Ashley's once we would have paid the $50 charge. They also had a beautiful small a roll top secretary that would fit. I fell in love ! While the store owner went to make sure he had one in the back, Mike and I also looked at dining room chairs and they were less expensive than those at furniture stores too. Of course those at furniture stores were already stained but these were real wood... some even oak or other hardwoods ! Gee add $20 in stain and a little work and you have such a superior product. We could not fit the chairs in the aztek with the desk but we will be going back for them. Though I now have to go pick out some stain, I will do it thankful that Ashley's has the messed up delivery policy because otherwise I would have surely ended up with an inferior product. Isn't it funny how things work out ?