CHINA NEEDS A GOOD Q. C. SYSTEM

THIS IS RIDICULOUS. CAN YOU TOP IT?

Yesterday I decided I would replace the towel bar in the shower. It is brass plated, but the finish was worn and looked kind of shabby. Sandy thought we should replace it. {Works for me.}

So I went to Home Depot and bought a brass finish towel bar that had the same style as original and matches others in the bathroom.

I took down the old towel bar and saw that the wall clips were pretty much standard and looked like many that I had installed over the years in various homes. Oops. First mistake. The new towel bar required that the brackets be installed in a horizontal position and not vertically as were the old ones. O.K. no sweat. I will just have to be very careful and drill four new holes in the Corian shower wall.
Fortunately for me I remembered to check and see if the coach was level. It was not. Had I installed the new towel bar by relying on my spirit level, once the coach was placed into the level position the towel bar would slope downward. Score one for me.
Speaking of slopes. This is where everything started to go down hill.

After installing the new wall clips exactly 18 inches apart, I could not get the two segments of towel bar to attach to the wall clips. The round rod was too long. How can that be, I thought. Well it seems that the Quality Control Department in this Chinese manufacturing plant was on a tea break when my towel bar came down the assembly line. Someone forgot the step where three ¼ inch slits are cut into each end of the round towel bar. If the slits were in place, the towel bar would slide past three little ridges that keep the towel bar from spinning. A nice feature in a motor home where the vibration of driving down the road could cause the round bar to rotate and dump a towel on the shower floor. Now – mind you – I know a wet towel on the shower floor is not a disaster. But it is the principle of the thing. Furthermore, now I had to disassemble everything and go back to Home Depot and look for the same model, but with the slips cut into each end.

The lady at the Returns Desk was really nice. I showed her the instruction sheet and the defective part and she recognized immediately that this was a problem. She even suggested I open and examine the replacement towel bar to make sure I took home one that would work. Seven boxes later and no useable towel bar, so I took them all up front to the Returns Desk, where she again apologized profusely and put a Return To Vendor tag on each of the 8 boxes.

Fortunately, for me there are two Home Depot stores near our house so I went to the other one and found the same product. These also had the correct slots in the towel bar ends and so I bought one and took it home. But this is not the end of the story. This particular tower bar had a totally different system of brackets and would require yet more holes in the Corian. Making it even worse was that the towel bar was supposed to snap into place over the “Easy Clips.” Now, if you are like me, you know that anything labeled “Easy” is never that way.

Not only do I not like snap on towel bars, but I suspected that it would fall off the wall after a year of road use.

Now what do I do. There is a third Home Depot about 15 miles away so I went there the following day. They had the type of towel bar that needs the 3 slots, but the slots were not cut in the ends. By this time I knew that I would be able to make the towel bar work for me by using my hacksaw to trim off about ¼ inch of towel bar. I did just that. I put a dab of adhesive caulk on the edge of the towel bar the goes inside of the bracket. Once the adhesive cures, the towel bar will not be able to spin.

So this little task took me about 4 hours, trips to 3 different Home Depot stores. I think I better go lie down.