the conclusion of the chair story.

ah yes. the chair.

our tale continues the weekend before my birthday this year. end of july, we head out on a double date with some close friends. dining and drinking ensue and we take turns discussing all the things. at whatever point, the chair saga comes up, and my friend wendy says: "why don't you just tweet about it?". this was in response to my having emailed wade after his "zach is a cokehead" email and not getting any response after three weeks and a follow-up email.

so. i took to social media. sunday morning, i composed a tweet along the lines of: don't use needto.com because they are not responsive, use taskrabbit (a needto competitor) for this type of service. it wasn't the nicest thing i could have tweeted, but it certainly didn't involve expletives or anything too incendiary.

well. by sunday afternoon, i receive a two-minute voicemail on my cell phone from wade, ceo of needto.com, himself. he's rambling and somewhat incoherent and clearly very upset by my tweet (side note: this is hilarious to me. a tweet? c'mon.). i call him back as we're on our way to the neighborhood pool with the kidlets. 27 minutes of sitting in the hot car later, i get off the phone with wade. he has basically cried on the phone with me, telling me tales of woe about how insolvent his company is, how i'm the only person that's ever had even a slight issue, how he invested his life savings into this, how he used to sell books door-to-door in college, etc etc. it was a full-on therapy session for mr. wade, during which i felt like a complete jerk. which is ironic because, again, I JUST WANTED MY STUPID CHAIR BACK. or some other sort of resolution. because that's what should happen when you're a BUSINESS. i digress.

in the therapy session, wade let me know he was in california trying to raise more venture capital and would be back in austin tuesday, whereupon he would follow up on his lead on zach's girlfriend and i could expect to hear from him wednesday. fine. wednesday comes and goes, so late thursday afternoon, i send an email asking how it went with the girlfriend track-down. wade replies with more excuses.

that weekend was my birthday. i basically reached a catharsis after talking with my friend matt that i needed to just let it go and quit wasting everyone's time. which is solid advice. and probably something i should have done four months ago. or more. but whatever.

the following week, my heroic husband texts me during the day. he asks for a picture of the chair and for the number i have for zach, which i provide. the timeline went something like this:

afternoon: justin calls zach's number and someone else answers. justin asks for zach and the guy hesitates, says he lent his phone to zach several months ago and knows him. justin says he'd like to talk to zach about a job, if the guy has a way to get in touch with him.
moments later, justin gets a call from zach himself. he exists! they start talking and jb basically says "my wife is crazy, she's not letting this chair thing go, can you help me out?". zach says he has no idea where it is, but that last he saw it, he left it at the pedicab shop where he used to work (before he was fired for stealing or whatever...he didn't add that part).
justin calls the pedicab place and gets stephan on the phone, proprietor of said pedicab establishment. stephan says he won't be in until that evening, but he'll look around, but he doesn't think they have anything like that.

evening: we get the kids to bed and jb heads out. he drives to the east side sketch warehouse that is the pedicab hub. he walks in to said warehouse and sees a group of dudes sitting around on crates and random old busted furniture, drinking beers and playing video games. jb asks for stephan, and a guy says "that's me!". jb explains who he is again, stephan is unbelievably nice and helpful, although not optimistic that they will find anything.
this warehouse apparently has like a billion rooms in it, so justin and stephan meander through, opening random doors and then moving on when no chairs are discovered. about the third room they open has two dudes playing video games in the dark. stephan says "hey guys, any chairs in this room?". the dude sitting on a random mattress says no, but then dude #2 says "oh, hey, wait, man, this is a chair", gesturing to the chair he's sitting on. they turn on some sort of light, justin looks over and says "dude, that's my chair".

meanwhile, i'm at home, text-stalking jb, praying he's not being abducted. fortunately, the pedicab culture is a friendly group. they helped justin haul our chair into his car, then invited him to drink beers and play video games with him for a bit, which of course he did because this is how dudes work (i won't get in to how alien this would be in the female universe). during this portion of the evening, jb was regaled with everyone's stories about zach, who has been dubbed "holocaust zach", a nickname i will refrain from commenting on. apparently, he owes everyone beer and money, is the least reliable person ever, and is generally a bit of a loser. can't say any of this surprises me in the least.

as for our chair, during its stint at the warehouse, it seems some sort of gross dog made it its home. it's literally too disgusting to bring into our house, so it's living in the shed right now until i buy some new fabric and bring it to a real, legitimate reupholsterer. but, it's home. the end!