As it turns out, Big Brother is watching...and Home Depot is keeping the blinds open. Well, HD isn't keeping the blinds open per se, but they're definitely keeping the blinds out of my condo.Last month, my wife made the mistake of going to the Home Depot on Rhode Island Ave to order the blinds for our new place. She mentioned that this was something of a priority order since our condo faces the North side of FBI headquarters and its roughly 4,000 office windows. It's been a bit awkward around the house with the nation's foremost domestic intelligence agency chronicling my daily routine (which, by the way, consists primarily of sleeping in or lounging around in my boxers, rearranging new furniture and opening our remaining moving boxes -- I might actually be the least interesting surveillance target in the history of the Bureau). Some privacy would be nice and blinds would help.
So my wife went up to Rhode Island Ave to make a simple order -- that was several weeks ago, and we're still living sans blinds. As I'm sure you'll be shocked to discover, the process is longer and more difficult than it needs to be. First of all, there is only one person in the store who can answer any questions about the blinds themselves and the ordering/installation process. Naturally, that person is never actually at the desk (or in the store for that matter). The person we were left to speak with had trouble figuring out ON A COMPUTER what our total was with a 15% discount (I wish I were making this up). My wife ended up doing the 3rd grade math long-hand on a piece of paper. Of course, our math-challenged employee had the gall to ask "are you sure that's right?". Secondly, HD has subcontracted everything out -- even the guy who measures your windows (and by the way, why do we have to wait weeks for some "specialist" to come measure our windows?? I'm not the smartest guy in the District, but surely I can be trusted to negotiate the intricate workings of a tape measure). So assuming you can get the one semi-competent HD employee on the phone, she has no idea what's going on with your blinds order because, like every other "service" Home Depot provides, some other company is responsible for it. In HD's defense, their employees have been magnificently trained to give you that company's 800 number. "You can do it, we can help," indeed.
So, still no blinds for us. In the meantime, I'm sure that the FBI has gone from morbid curiosity with the exhibitionists across the street to a full-fledged investigation of us both. Can't say I blame them either -- with our constant presence and all the unpacked boxes sitting by the window, we must look like a couple of Oswalds sitting in a makeshift school book depository. In fact, the president was visiting the Hoover building just the other day and FBI security shut down our entire street. Didn't exactly seem like standard precautions -- I can only imagine they had their eyes on us again.
