Lug Stars To The Rescue!

​                          Books by Patti Liszkay available on Amazon:   
     "Equal And Opposite Reactions"      http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
     "Hail Mary"                                           https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
     "Tropical Depression"                        https://www.amzn.com/B0BTPN7NYY

​Lug Stars To The Rescue!

...Continued from yesterday:
     And so, not really knowing what else to do, I did as Matti, the hapless LG customer service worker who had the misfortune of picking up on my call, instructed me to do: I ate lunch. (see yesterday's post, https://www.ailantha.com/blog/abandon-hope-all-ye-who-order-an-lg-dryer-online​). 
    In truth, I did not expect LG to call me back after lunch with an offer of compensation for me having to take care of the installation and haul away service LG had advertised (falsely) on its website,  ​

​...and had claimed (falsely) to have completed on the post-delivery paperwork I was given.

      By that time I had ceased expecting a call or any compensation from LG (and to this day I have received neither). 
      Rather, I needed to turn my attention to the botheration of getting our old dryer hauled away so that Tom could install the new one himself. 
        We considered asking a big, muscular young do-it-your-selfer-type guy we knew and his big, muscular brother if they'd take the job.
          "Don't ask the big, muscular do-it-your-selfer and his brother to do the job," said my daughter when she called me that evening for an update on my dryer drama.
            "Why not?" I asked my daughter. 
            "Because," she sad, "if they're not bonded, if they don't have workman's comp and they get hurt..."
              "Right," I said. 
​             "But look," she said,  "I'm sure there are lots places that haul things away. Just look on the internet."
           So I took my daughter's advice and looked on the internet. I scrolled around and came upon a promising-looking outfit called Lug Stars.​

     I called the number on the website and talked to Dave, the friendly young guy who owns the business. ​

     Being all talked-out on the subject of my dryer installation woes from having over the past week recounted it nine times to nine different LG customer service reps, I gave Dave just the bare bones of my story: that I needed the old dryer hauled away and the new one pushed against the wall so that it could be installed. 
         Dave then asked me if I'd like him to install my dryer, as before he started Lug Stars he used to install appliances. His offer was balm to my worn-out-from-b**tching brain, and I jumped on it.
        Dave was able to schedule my old dryer haul-away and new dryer installation for the following day, Friday, March 28, at noon. However on Friday morning a thought  that had been drifting around the back of  my mind for a while drifted to the front of my mind:  the thought of getting rid of an ancient vanity desk that had belonged to Tom's great aunt and had been bequeathed to us over 45 years ago.

      I called Dave and asked him if his crew might also be able to haul away the old vanity desk. He said yes, they could do that, then he told me that as a matter of fact they were at that moment in the area of my neighborhood and he wondered if they could come over and do the job now. Like, in fifteen minutes.
       For me, who had spent much of the past week on the phone on hold for far more than fifteen minutes waiting to be connected to a service rep, this felt like winning the lotto. "Yes!" I told him, "Yes, come now!"
         Now, there was one hitch to the crew coming over now as opposed to the agreed upon time of noon, and that was that Tom wasn't home. He was out at a breakfast get-together of his old work friends. But to me this was only an itty-bitty hitch. True, Tom is savvy as can be when it comes to plumbing, electrical, heating, cooling, and all the household infrastructure and repair  issues, and he knows how to talk the lingo with the maintenance people. I, on the other hand, tend to be in general ignorant as a mushroom about such things. Still, I figured that this would be a pretty straightforward undertaking which I could handle on my own. So I told Dave to send his crew over now. What could possibly go wrong?
         I found out when I led Dave and his crew of four likewise friendly young guys down the basement to where the dryers were. "Ohhh..." said Dave when I showed him the old dyer. "This is a gas dryer. I assumed you meant you had an electric dryer."
             Apparently I had neglected to mention when making the arrangements for haul away and installation that these were gas dryers. Apparently installing a gas dryer is akin to a federal project which Dave's crew was not equipped to undertake. I did not know that.
               I asked Dave if he could just cap the gas line  (I did know about capping the gas line; see yesterday's post) and haul away the old dryer, and Tom, who knew from gas dryers, could install it later. Dave gave me a definite maybe. Unless he was 100% sure that the gas cap I had would fit the gas line, he wouldn't disconnect it. And he wasn't 100% sure. For that matter, neither was I. He could, however, disconnect the line at the dryer...provided I was 100% sure that the gas shut-off valve was good and tight and he'd have to do a bubble test first. What did I think, he asked me. I thought I didn't know what he was talking about. And I was starting to sweat.
             I absolutely hated calling Tom while he was at his work friends breakfast, but my inner lost three-year-old was now in ascendance and so I called him anyway and made the mistake of putting the phone on speaker.
             What's going on? Why are they there now? Weren't they supposed to come at noon? Didn't they tell you they could do the installation? Let me talk to somebody!  So barked my mate into the phone, unaware that Dave and his crew of young guys were right there listening. I sheepishly handed the phone over to Dave, who didn't look like he much wanted to take it, but did anyway. 
              Dave explained to Tom his hesitancy to disconnect the dryer, not being sure of the state of our gas line. They spent a few moments discussing some inscrutable gas line esoterica, then Dave handed the phone back to me. 
               "What should we do?" I asked Tom.
               Tom let out a long sigh. "I'm coming home."
                After I hung up Dave said, "Your husband sounds mad."
                "Oh, no, ha, ha, no, he's not mad, ha, ha," I babbled on nervously. "See, he just, uh, he has a, you know, a big voice.  But don't worry, he's a really nice guy, ha, ha. Why don't I show you where that vanity desk is?"
           While Dave and his crew were upstairs taking apart the vanity desk  I stayed downstairs and called Tom again. I asked him to please be nice to the Lug Star guys, as they were nice guys and young and it wasn't their fault I didn't tell them about the gas dryer and then told them they could come early. Tom laughed and told me not to worry, of course he was going to be nice to the Lug Star guys. I asked him what about his breakfast? He said he told his friends to watch his food for him, he'd be back.
            By  the time Dave's crew finished moving the vanity desk Tom still hadn't arrived home. At that point the Lug Stars would have been within their rights to be on their way; they had a busy schedule, and one of the workers was checking on the couch and refrigerator job that was next on their agenda. But they patiently waited until Tom returned in hopes that they might yet succeed in hauling away our old gas dryer.
        While we were waiting Dave handed me a photograph his movers had found in the bottom of one of the drawers. It was an old forgotten picture of me (on the right, in the poncho and red slacks) with my Chinese Cambodian friend Sin, left, and my French friend Guenael, center, when we were in Granada, Spain during Easter of 1972.                 

         "Looks like that was taken in Europe," said Dave.
          "Yes, it was," I said. I asked Dave if he'd been to Europe.
        Dave told me that he was stationed in Hanau, Germany when he was in the army. I then told him that Tom, also Army, was stationed in Babenhausen, Germany, and that I worked as a Department of Defense Civilian in Aschaffensburg, Germany. This got us to talking about Germany, which settled us into a nice spirit of gemütlichkeit.
           When Tom arrived he and Dave in fact hit it off, chatting  for a minute about their army days - Dave with Air Defense, Tom with the Field Artillery.
          Here's Tom back in around 1973 on a field exercise in Grafenwöhr, Germany.

       Then we all, Dave, Tom, the Lug Stars and myself, headed down to the basement to see if there was a fighting chance of resolving our dryer issue today. 
         Tom and Dave hovered over the dryer gas line conferring about caps, valves, bubble tests, exhaust vents, connections, tools, and such. Tom was sure that the gas cap he'd bought would fit over the pipe and, though Tom no longer had his pipe wrench, having lent it out sometime or other to someone or other who never returned it, he thought he could probably detach the old dryer from the gas line using a utility pliers I kept in a kitchen drawer for the purpose of getting a grip on recalcitrant soda bottle caps. 
        My soda bottle pliers did eventually do the trick, though it took Dave holding the gas pipe steady while Tom yanked and yanked at the nut that attached the dryer's flexible tube to the gas pipe. After much substantial steadying and yanking, the gas pipe finally separated form the dryer tube, all the while Dave's crew standing by like a group of attentive young  medical residents gathered around to watch and learn from two experienced surgeons at work.
         And so, with the gas line detached from the dryer and safely capped, the Lug Stars were at last able to do what they'd initially come to do, that is, haul away our old dryer and push our new one from where it had been left at the foot of the basement stairs over to its rightful spot next to the washer where it would soon be hooked up and fulfilling its intended purpose. Then Tom zipped off to rejoin his friends and his breakfast which, he later informed me, was waiting for him and still warm.
​         As for Dave and his helpful Lug Stars, far from being put out at having had to spend more time than allotted on the job I'd lassoed them into, Dave left me a coupon for $20 off my next haul away job.
​         And as he was leaving Dave turned back to me and said, "You're right. Tom is a nice guy."

           Here's the Lug Stars website in case anybody in the Columbus, Ohio area needs some hauling:   https://lugstars.com/
            And here's their number: 614-816-5865

​           

​         Epilogue:
         After he returned from his breakfast Tom got to work hooking up our new dryer to the gas outlet.

       The job took him most of the day, including two trips to Home Depot due to this model of dryer requiring some special connectors.

        Having now a better understanding (in theory, if not in practice) of what a gas dryer installation involves, it's become clearer to me why neither LG nor RXO wanted to touch installing my dryer. Of course, they were wrong to advertise that they would send someone out to install my dryer for free if they weren't intending to. Still, considering the know-how needed to remove and install a gas dryer, I'm grateful they didn't.