Day 3 started with Steve removing the remaining counter, dismantling the sink and retaining the garbage disposal. I noticed that the garbage disposal’s attachment hardware was still on the old sink but I figured Steve knew what he was doing. I didn’t point this out to him which you’ll see later turned out to be a mistake. Now that the stove and sink were loose, the appliance guys can haul them away later in the day.

Next, steve leveled and installed the cabinets and their doors. Meanwhile, he tells me that he might get called in the afternoon to unload cabinets at another project and he might take the rest of the day off. That is fine with me since I needed to run a few errands. Finally, he removed the vent hood and the cabinet above the vent. Arnold’s appliance delivered the gas range and sink and hauled away the old stuff. Around noon, Steve left for the day.

I went over to Home Expressions to make the next payment installment, now that the job has started. We talk about my time off from work and Ken suggests that I really do not have to be around the house when Steve is working. Perhaps I can cut short my leave and head back to work starting tomorrow.

That evening, Home Depot calls me to say they have two doors ready to deliver. I can’t imagine how they can run a business like this – they didn’t track the fact that the two doors have already been delivered, along with the kitchen cabinets. I gave a piece of my mind to the guy on the phone and he apologized that the system periodically “gets confused” and drops tracking. I suspect there is a bigger problem with their tracking process. With such a voluminous amount of paperwork for every damn thing, how can they fully track every item? Based on my previous experience with another associate in the doors section who wistfully complained about the amount of paperwork for special orders but then added “who am I to be commenting?”, I knew nothing would get done based on my feedback. Home Depot doesn’t seem like a place where employees make a difference in operational improvements.