Having dealt with the public for decades I doubt quite highly that any of the comments you made would have pacified this customer. She wanted the store to have the item, period. She was going to complain about not getting it. Period. Having a "subject to availability" or any such disclaimer would have made no difference because she wanted it and that was it. Common sense tells people that that's a situation where they could be out of stock. But people with the "customer is always right" attitude don't use common sense. They feel they're more important than anyone else and can order store employees to violate company policy to satisfy them. Some people don't feel they should be subject to rules. Being rude to the store manager as this woman was, simply put was out of line. Shame on her. She should be sent to bed without her supper, grounded, given a "time out" or any other such treatment. When will these people learn that the manager doesn't set the rules. He's there to *enforce* the rules. Gee, is that really that hard to understand? If she handled the situation properly she would have contacted the corporate office after first being told he has no say on it, but NO, she wasn't going to do that, she expected special treatment. And she was going to try to make life miserable for an employee thinking that they'll give in just for "customer service" and in reality she only made herself look like a total fool. They she's likely to go home crying "bad customer service", when the employees can go home laughing about an unreasonable and childish customer. This woman's attitude is classic spoiled brat customer action. You see this all the time. And they generally do the same thing. ACT friendly... at first. Put what they think is a jovial, light sing-song in the voice (which most people with a couple weeks experience can see through, knowing what's coming next!) simply to try to get what they want. It's no different than a spoiled brat kid saying "I want a cookie". They're told they can't have what they want (Like telling the young brat we're out of cookies.) then they start getting louder and stamp their feet at times to a flat out fist pounding temper tantrum (just like the kid on the floor "I WANT IT, I WANT IT, I WANT IT!!!!) Shouting, screaming and yes, even pretend crying can be included in both. The similarities are striking. These types of people should be subjected to the same treatment in their job sometime, it'd be interesting to see how they react. I'd gamble they'd go "CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT THEY WANTED? LOL The staff could go ahead and say they agree with her or use other touchy-feely comments and but anyone who is pragmatic and any retail experience knows that it's not practical to try to assign someone to watch each item and go put OOS signs up and then take them down when stock is replenished. I've found that the bellyachers are big talkers but little doers. One of the first thing they spout is "I'll NEVER come back here again!!!!" Any retail employee is hard-pressed to refrain from splitting a gut when that happens. Contrary to what people want you to believe, it takes a lot for a customer to truly ban a store from their shopping armada. They shop certain stores for certain reasons. They put up with things. It's part of the shopping mentality. Lots of studies have been done. People will sit and wait in line, they'll pay more, they accept lower customer service, etc to get what they want and that's usually things like convenience, brand recognition and price, whether an actual savings or a perceived savings. When people *do* drop a store, with the exception of a small store, they'll usually be back within a few weeks to a couple months. "People want to be heard, and know that they are being taken care of." Some people do, but this woman wanted the world handed to her on a silver platter. She WAS heard. She was informed that the manager could do nothing about it but that wasn't good enough. She expected him to jeopardize his job to give her what she wanted. He had no right to do it and having to tell her THREE TIMES is stupid. That woman needs a reality check and she owes the store manager an apology. I wish I (or someone else with some sense) would have been there to explain the reality of life to her. People need to learn how to complain properly. If you have a complaint, fine, voice it. But voice it properly. When you find out you're talking to the wrong person they shouldn't have to tell you THREE TIMES that you're b!tching out the wrong person. "Abdocating blame seldom works under any circumstance." LOL Get real. Telling the truth is NOT abdicating blame! It's INFORMING the person that they have to go to the place where their unreasonable demands could stand any sort of chance of being granted. I will grant you that not everyone will realize that a corporate store has corporate policies. Again, common sense is not so common. BUT, when someone is told that they have no control over the situation and they keep on with their temper tantrum, they're not interested in voicing a grievance, they simply want to throw a temper tantrum like any other spoiled brat. Once the shrieking starts in a tantrum, it generally has to run its course, whether a 2 year old or an 80 year old. Customer service is getting less and less these days, I'll agree with that. But what so sorely needs teaching is consumer education and how to complain, and the more important thing is WHERE to complain. And the other thing they need to be taught is that the store will likely *not* go out of business even if the spoiled brat *does* take their business elsewhere. I haven't seen Michael's file bankruptcy yet because of this and I doubt I will. There is a part of business that there are some customers a store does not want. These are the types they don't want. They don't buy much, they complain about everything, trying to get a discount or other compensation (well I had a LILT in my voice and you didn't give me a new car as compensation!). They're far more like to use and abuse items then return it out of return policy expecting full cash refund.

"The Statler Stitcher® is a computer software program combined with hardware which will operate a longarm quilting machine and can stitch almost any design. A Gammill® machine equipped with Statler Stitcher® can handle an intricately patterned king-size quilt in a matter of hours instead of days, and is guided by the computer instead of by hand. The system can determine the pattern size, block size, stitches per inch, repetitions of the pattern and the offset of the pattern." If you have $30,000 to spare and room in your basement, you can have your very own quilt factory, and the glory will be a production run of one single factory quilt at a time. It will be perfectly easy to save your program and throw on quilt after whole cloth quilt--they will all turn out perfectly, and perfectly the same, at the great rate of two per day. It's an amazing machine--the "quilter" doesn't even have to stay in the room. Most factories call this person an operator. You may say you'd never churn out copies--but you COULD. Back to my painting analogy--is it original hand work, or is it limited edition print signed by the artist, or is it a paint by numbers kit? Folk art follows a tradition in a craft. Generally, folk art can be done by...folks. Whatever is happening by professional long arm quilters with these expensive machines is VERY far from the heart and soul of a quilting tradition. My grandmother and great aunt were skilled factory workers at the Derby--now known as Fruit of the Loom. You can take the machine out of the factory but you can't take the factory out of the machine. They'd no more be proud of a machine quilt than of a pair underwear they bought at Wal-Mart. My mom sends out machine pieced quilts to be long armed--it's expedient, but she'd never call it the best. The fact is, by law of supply and demand, with automatic machines churning out two quilts a day, those quilts will be less valued over the course of the years. People are smart, and all the art talk in the world doesn't change the value of reproducible work done in a few hours by automatic machine. The human element becomes entirely secondary to the machine. Some of these shows function mostly as a marketing tool for the industry, and indeed the whole shift to machine quilting was pushed along by big prizes awarded by businesses. It's very much in the interest of business to elevate the easiest. The easiest sells. BTW, lets all make a million pillowcases!!! Excuse me? This, I think, is what kills machine quilting for me, and makes me reject it as art (not high art, not fine art, but folk art.) The end product of Gammill Statler Stitcher will be indistinguishable from any other machine quilt--except it will look very, very skilled and be entirely reproducible. I feel like my values have been slowly pushed too far, my standards slowly pulled aside and I feel myself backlashing. Suddenly, I look up and say "That's ridiculous." I certainly don't mean to attack machine quilters, especially you, Annie. What you do is practically unique--find me another professional treadle quilter (yeah, I know there might be a few, but still, it's rare isn't it?) It's not black and white by any means, machine quilting has it's place, albeit with all these different categories and qualifiers. Hand quilted will always be a class alone for me, no explanations required because everybody understands a hand, a needle, and a thread.

I'm not inclined to put art on the wall just to decorate. I prefer to live with objects that have meaning to me. When I was in college, I saw drawings by a local artist and fell in love. A year later when I got a job in my field, I tracked down the artist. She she still had 3 40" x 60" pieces from the exhibit. This is Witch Tree VIII. The materials are paper, lead, tobacco juice and vermillion, which are traditional gifts to the tree. The image is what Hazel saw lying one her back and looking up through Manidoo-giizhikens (aka Witch Tree, Little Cedar Spirit Tree). I'm fortunate to know a framer who is excellent in framing to enhance the art. It hangs in my dining room. Here's a link to a local TV new story on the tree. Finding MN - WCCO about the tree.

@IdaClaire Things are looking better and better! I like the trees. Gallery walls are great because they can evolve over time. Here are the steps I have swirling around in my head when I am hanging art. Maybe it will help you or maybe not. Take this with a grain of salt as I am no expert on gallery walls or anything else for that matter. I came up with it off the cuff but it works for me. Start with the largest pieces first. I like to create vertical columns of art going up the wall with the largest pieces at the bottom. Here is the start of four columns. Next center art vertically on each column, with the bigger pieces on the bottom. Try to have the same amount of space between each piece. As you obtain more pieces, create more verticals but keep the bigger pieces on bottom. Do you see below I went from 4 columns to 6 columns? Last, add one or two smaller pieces outside of the typical areas. You are done once every inch of space is covered with stuff from floor to ceiling ;-)