Tag Archives: Toy WTF

We finally finished our swing set on Wednesday.

It looked like it was done for the last few days of construction, but a bunch of the adorable details needed to go up before it was finished.

But, technically, if you read the instructions, we are not finished yet. We skipped what is obviously a vital piece of our swing set.

That’s right, after 30ish hours of construction (when 8 were predicted) and tightening hundreds of screws and bolts at sometimes precarious angles, our swing set is not complete until we drill in the brand name.

I actually tried to get my husband to install this because I thought it was hilarious, but I lost that debate. I could technically do this myself, but he’s right. Their expectation of us to install this is completely obnoxious.

Seriously, Gorilla, if you want your brand name on the swing set in other people’s backyards, YOU put the screws into the wood to display it. The people who just spent 30 hours building a swing set aren’t going to do it.

Other than that and our unexpected new tooth cost induced by the new swing set, we love this thing. It’s way cuter than the house we’re living in. Also, the kids seem to think it was a wise investment.

So we have all the tools and accessories required to build this swing set, but something almost went very wrong when it was time to put on the roof.

I don’t know how your average sized ladder is supposed to make it so you can reach the top of this roof, but my husband and I both realized this part of the project was meant for people much taller than us.

I’m a whopping 5’3″. No matter what I stood on, I could not reach the top of this thing, much less tilt a drill at a proper angle to get a screw in properly. I can barely use a drill properly when I CAN reach things, which might be part of the reason we are on Day 4 of this project and aren’t finished. My husband is somewhat better than me with tools, but he’s only 5’6″ so he had trouble reaching things too. He had to stand on the swing set platform and stand on his tiptoes to reach to put in the top boards in the roof. It was incredibly awkward.

The whole time he was doing this, we were both thinking about how much easier it would be if one of us was properly tall. A tall person could reach this roof with no problems.

Instead, we were handicapped by our shortness. If my husband had been even an inch shorter, we might have lost an hour or so hunting down a taller ladder.

We put in another 3 hours today, bringing us to at least 24 hours of work, 3 times what was predicted. We aren’t finished yet. We have at least another couple of hours to go, but we’re getting close.

Our swing set instruction manual predicts complete assembly in 6-8 hours.

We’ve been at it at least 21 hours, not including the 3 hours my husband spent sorting and labeling parts, and while we have made good progress, we are nowhere near finished.

And yet our swing set instruction manual says we should have finished this project 13-15 hours ago.

We knew our instruction manual would lie about the amount of time it would take to build the swing set. We are no strangers to this phenomenon, plus everything we read on the internet warned us about this fact. All of our friends whined about how time-consuming their own swing sets were to build. So when I read the 8 hour time prediction, I couldn’t help but laugh.

The prediction is just so ridiculous. Just looking at all the pieces that came with the kit, you can see that there’s no way that 8 hours will finish the project. There are 390 screws, 42 tee nuts, 99 washers and 72 bolts that need to be properly placed on an insane amount of wood and tightened in sometimes awkward positions.  That’s 603 specific pieces that need to be put in place, not including any of the wood or plastic.

What I figure is that Gorilla (our swing set company) did some mathematical equation that resulted in giving us 1 1/4 minutes per screw/bolt/what have you, and this equation resulted in 8 hours… but not everyone will take 1 1/4 minutes to use a drill, so clearly they needed to deduce 2 hours for the people who are better with tools than we are (every time I use screw, tool or wood in a sentence, I feel a little dirty).

This leaves no time for the stuff you REALLY need to do when building a swing set– like figuring out what unlabeled piece is what, finding it, assembling it correctly, making sure things are level, realizing you lost a screw in the grass, reading and rereading and RErereading the instructions and much more.

We’re definitely making progress on the swing set (and by “we”, I mean 90% my husband 10% or less me thanks to childcare obligations and a shortage of tools), but we have a long way to go even after 21 hours. It will forever remain a mystery to me why manufacturers (AND chefs for that matter) can’t be honest about the construction times. The truth is ugly when it comes to these time commitments, but wouldn’t it help us all schedule our projects better if we knew how long it would REALLY take?

Tomorrow: Hey Gorilla, short people build swing sets too!

I know you all are just DYING to hear if our swing set ever arrived.

Or maybe you don’t care at all.

Whatever the case, here’s the latest on the Swing Set Saga.

When we last left Swing Set Drama Manor, it was 4:30 pm-ish and I still hadn’t gotten a call to warn me (not ask me) about what 4-hour window of time my swing set would arrive the next day. At 7:30 pm, my phone rang. And we couldn’t find it before it went to voicemail. We were cursing at each other for missing an important call.

Don’t worry, “they” called back again 2 minutes later. “They” were an automated voice message informing us that we needed to be home between 3 and 7 pm Wednesday to receive “a package”.

A COMPUTER told us less than 24 hours before our swing set was due that we HAD to be home after regular business hours. There was no way for us to say “Oh, that time doesn’t work for us” or even confirm that we could be there because a COMPUTER called us. The computer repeated itself twice with a phone number to call if there were issues, but if you didn’t have a pen or a really great memory, that information was gone awfully quickly… and probably led to a customer service facility that wasn’t open anyway.

It seems to me that when you pay a place $950 for something, they should at least have a HUMAN call you to make sure the window they gave you works. I said Wednesday was an ok day for us, but I think most of us would assume WEDNESDAY meant something like 8 am to 5 pm, not 7 pm. What if we had an evening commitment? Apparently we were supposed to have 24 hours free when they said “Wednesday”.

So, Wednesday was a waiting game. We waited and waited and waited.

Guess what time our swing set arrived? 3? 4? 5? 6?

Nope. 7:45 pm.

That’s right, they had a FOUR HOUR window to deliver this package and they were still 45 minutes late and didn’t call us about it until about 7:20 when I was already enraged and calling customer service, which closed at 7:30, but directed me to leave a message or call back tomorrow.

REALLY?!

Whatever, the case, it’s here now and somehow we are expected to transform this

and this

into this

Man, Gorilla has a lot more confidence in us than we do.

I called Walmart about the swing set yesterday. After a lot of holding, the customer service rep patched me through to the people delivering the swing set. Why wasn’t I given that number to begin with? I don’t get it.

BUT ANYWAY, I updated my phone number no less than three times. They asked me if they could deliver the swing set Wednesday (tomorrow). I said fine. They said they’d call me back Tuesday (today) to give me a 4 hour window in which they’d deliver my FIVE HUNDRED POUND ITEM. You’d think you could get more specific with something that large, but WHATEVER.

Lily is in day camp this week. Other than drop off and pick up, I can be home, but obviously there’s two half hour periods I can’t be home. I was hopeful I could work around these two time slots with the company.

But guess what?

They haven’t called me today. It’s 4:39 pm Tuesday. When will my swing set be here tomorrow? Who the hell knows.

Again, the plight of the $100 shipping v. the $400 shipping (although we can all guess that $400 shipping would be just as bad or worse).

Will my swing set ever get here? Will I sit here all day tomorrow, but miss delivery because I’m dropping Lily off at day camp?

Stay tuned to Creative Kids Play’s Swing Set Adventure to find out!