The party is about to start and there’s no time to find the party carpet rental of your dreams. So, like any rational person would do, you look up how much it costs to rent a carpet for a party online.
You Google it. You Yahoo it. You Bing it. The only party-related site that appears is the rental company’s website, which is filled with cakes and balloons that you don’t even care about, because you’re trying to find the website where they list prices for party carpets.
What you’re looking for, according to this site, is “the correct price for carpeting at your next event.” So you type in the date of your event and your zip code into this site’s search engine so that they can send you an email with the price of the rental carpet based on applicable taxes and fees if there are any.
For some reason, you are put on hold. You do not wonder why this is the case because you are on hold with the party carpet rental company’s website. “Please hold while we look it up.”
The moment feels like one of those moments in a horror movie where you start to scream but then nothing happens for a long time until it dawns on you that there is nothing that can happen to you if the full moon never rises.
“Hello, I’m checking at 8 p.m. Mountain Standard Time tomorrow?” No response. “Thank you. I really appreciate this.”
The person on the other end is now trying to help you check out. “What are you looking for today?” they ask, as if you’re there buying a party carpet instead of trying to find out how much it costs to rent one.
“I’m looking for how much it costs to rent a carpet for a party,” you say, with increasing urgency for some reason.
“You’ll be renting a CARPET? You mean like flooring?” they ask, confusedly. “Like carpet flooring?” They mean this literally because they are selling flooring on their website. “You can’t rent a flooring as an event. Can you?”
“I’m trying to find out how much it costs to rent a party carpet,” you say, as if you’re about to tell them that your baby just died and you want $5,000 in cash and a new puppy. “I wanted to know if their website shows prices for things like that.”
“Oh, is the party on Saturday?” they ask. “Oh yeah. Yeah.” You repeat that word repeatedly because it sounds dreadfully important at this moment in time, but really the only thing that sounds dreadfully important is how much it costs to rent a carpet for a party once your baby just died.
“So you’re checking prices for a party that takes place on Saturday?” You don’t know why this is important or relevant, but they want to confirm it before they go ahead and show you the price. “Yeah.”
They give you the price. “How many square yards of carpet do you need?” they ask after it has been confirmed that your baby just died and now there’s no money for anything so thank God at least there’s no time for anything either.
You say, “Is there an option where I pay for this in advance so I can get really drunk during the next few hours?” They say that it isn’t possible but will put your request in an email to their manager anyway.
