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They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here you go:

What are you looking at, you ask. No, it’s not the design work of a drunken Martha Stewart, but it might as well be. And no, this is not what Mrs. Dough and I had planned when we set out one fateful afternoon in October 2007 to buy new slip covers for a sofa and the two chairs pictured above. No, this is the handy work of Crate & Barrel. How did this happened, you ask. Here’s the time line:

10/01/07: Mrs. Dough and I travel to Crate & Barrel and order slip covers for a sofa and two chairs. Crate & Barrel tells us the slip covers will be ready in early December just in time for Christmas, and we naively believe them. We also pay a deposit of more than $500 toward the total cost of the slip covers.

12/22/07 @ 1 pm: Having not heard from Crate & Barrel, I call and learn that the slip covers are in. They couldn’t explain why they hadn’t called us, but I go in, pick up the order, and make the final payment.

12/22/07 @ 2:30 pm: Back home I unpack the slip covers for the couch and one chair, and realize that the slip cover for the second chair is missing. I call Crate & Barrel, and they say they’ll get back to me.

12/26/07: Having not heard from Crate & Barrel, I call back. What we eventually learn is that the slip cover for the second chair was not fabricated for some reason, and they have resubmitted the order. They ask us to return part of the new slip cover for the chair so they can match the dye lot. So we take the new green stripped slip cover off of a pillow on the chair to the left, and return it to Crate & Barrel. We put the old flowery slip cover back on to protect the pillow. Crate & Barrel tells us the second slip cover would be ready in four weeks. Again, we believe them.

~1/31/08: Now we are told it will be ready in another four to six weeks.

~2/15/08: Now they tell us it could be until June before it’s ready. At this point we are also told that they will provide some financial compensation for our troubles, but that they would discuss this with us when the order was complete.

~3/12/08: I begin wondering if this is God’s way of saying we shouldn’t spend as much as we did on three slip covers.

~4/1/08: We learn that they think it could be soon.

4/17/08: We are still waiting.

We’ve been extremely patient through all of this. The sales manager has been very apologetic, although that alone doesn’t solve our problem. Hmm, maybe writing about this situation on a blog and then sending a link to the post to Crate & Barrel’s CEO and the Consumerist will help. I’ll let you know.