Best Buy, Drugs & Police

What do Best Buy, drugs, and police all have in common?  My new refrigerator!

Wayne's dad and stepmom gave us a refrigerator as a wedding gift 9 years ago.  On our 9th anniversary it went kaput.  Happy Anniversary to us! Rather than spending the evening eating the yummy dinner I had prepared the day before we had to go out refrigerator shopping (with two small children... always fun!).  This turned out to be our most interesting anniversary by far.  Some of the best memories come from foiled plans and this is for sure a memory we will never forget.

We are H.H. Gregg people so we wanted to buy there but they just couldn't compare to the deal we found on a scratch and dent model at Best Buy and since we didn't have an emergency refrigerator fund we couldn't be too choosy.  The salesman at Best Buy told us what a great fridge this was and explained that it was "brand new" but was marked down due to a dent in the door.  I am for sure understanding of a minor dent in the door for a $300 discount!  Still trying to save money and the fact that we currently did not have a working fridge at our house so time was of the essence we decided to load it up and take it ourselves.  My dad brought his Ford Explorer, which my minivan quickly put to shame, when the fridge didn't come close to fitting.  We had to move both kids car seats to the Explorer to make room for the fridge... you can imagine the chaos happening on the Best Buy curb at this point.  Well let me just tell you that the chaos only got worse from here.

We finally got the fridge home.  While I tried corralling a VERY inquisitive 1.5 year old and a sleepy/grumpy 3 month old my dad and Wayne got the broken fridge out and the new fridge in (this entailed the removal of fridge doors as well as our front door and garage door... quite the ordeal).

 We finally thought we were good to go and then I hear Wayne say, "What is this?!"  He had opened the freezer door only to find a baggie containing 7 pre-filled syringes hanging halfway out of the ice maker.  Yes... that's right, syringes!  Did I tell you this was a day to remember????

Apparently these shifted in transport... glad we found them
right away!

After we processed the craziness of this situation I got on the phone to call Best Buy and explain two things to them... 1.  this refrigerator was NOT new obviously and 2. there are DRUGS in it!  By this time it was 8:45 and they close at 9... plenty of time for a phone call, right?  Wrong... apparently they quit answering the phone early because we had three phones trying to get through and kept getting the same "there is one person in front of you" message until it was interrupted with "we are now closed".  SUPER!!!  We have a USED refrigerator with DRUGS inside and no one to take care of it!

Wayne called their corporate office.  We told them that these drugs did not have a prescription label but did have "Cortosyn" written in faded permanent marker.

We had NO idea if that was indeed what was inside or not and didn't want to end up in the middle of a giant drug bust only to find out it was heroin or something.   Some of you are familiar with my neighborhood... this isn't out of the realm of possibility and if you've been paying attention you've no doubt learned that a drug bust might not be the strangest part of this day.  Corporate agreed that we should call the authorities in order to get these out of our house.  So onto the next part of our evening... calling the police.  I was exhausted and Wayne offered to let me go to bed and let him deal with it but I said no way... this time we weren't peeking through the blinds of our bedroom wondering what the police were doing... we were in the middle of the action!   No way was I going to bed!

I called the police and no they didn't "send someone right over."  We live in one county but the Best Buy is in another so we had to talk jurisdiction.  They suggested I take the refrigerator back to Best Buy because that is where the drugs came from and their county police couldn't cross county lines to come to my house (I live ON the line).  I explained that she was totally off her rocker if she thought we were loading this monster back up to get it across the street.  She put me on hold and talked to a detective who then said they would send an officer from our county to get the drugs.  Wayne thought this whole thing was funny... he said if someone smuggles drugs in from Mexico I'm guessing they deal with him where they find him... they don't make him go back to Mexico first!  So police were on their way and we could finally sit down and eat our Jimmy Johns (almost as good as the chicken manacotti I had prepared for our special anniversary dinner).  The officer showed up about 11pm and could do nothing more than laugh and shake his head about the strangest call he received that evening.  He was super nice and took the drugs and left a case number for us to share with Best Buy, who would be hearing from me first thing in the morning... assuming they would choose to answer the phone at that point.

It took about 3 attempts, each one with me sitting on hold for at least 10 minutes before I finally got a hold of someone at the store.  I have a REALLY hard time believing their phones are THAT busy!  The first girl asked if I wanted to bring it back to the store... ummm NO... I want to talk to a manager because I WILL NOT be moving another fridge!  The manager was a little more reasonable and totally flabbergasted by the entire situation.  She called me back and offered a different brand model that her appliance manager claimed was better but needed my answer right away to get me in line for delivery the next day.  I explained that I would need to look at it before making that decision and with two kids in meltdown mode had to hand the decision making off to Wayne at work.  Turns out the refrigerator they wanted to give us as a replacement was a lesser model and did about half the things this one did.  That wasn't going to fly.  They finally agreed to deliver a BRAND NEW version of the fridge we bought at the scratch and dent price and pick up the old "new" one.

So by 4:00, two days after this entire saga started, I finally had a NEW fridge in my kitchen!  Oh and the manager did let me know she checked the "history" (something a NEW fridge shouldn't have) of the fridge and found that it was originally at an animal hospital so the drugs probably were what the baggie said they were!

How's that for a memory making anniversary?!?!  Let's just say Best Buy is lucky we aren't the suing type because I'm guessing we could have made quite the case against them!  I'm just thankful Wayne found the drugs and not Case who thought it was SO fun to play in the new fridge!

Just another day in the Johnston house! HA!