Wait For It

Last July, I decided not to get a new watch. My old one had begun to fog up on the inside and I couldn't seem to get it repaired at the mall. At first I wanted to just replace it with a more sturdy one that I could wear while at work but I found that to get a really good watch for that type of abuse is cost prohibitive. I mean, who's gonna take a thousand dollar watch into a burning building?

So I decided to get the old one fixed. I found, through a dive shop that I called, a certified Seiko repair shop: Hurley Roberts. The repair shop is in a small suite in a large industrial park. Nothing about the business, except the website, screamed professionalism but those are generally the places that do the best work, right?

Flash to December, five months later, and the repair shop claims they haven't received the parts for my watch yet. I tell them that "there isn't anywhere on Earth that is five months from here." (Or maybe it's the geographical oddity Clooney's character spoke of.) Frustrated, having few other options, and trying to get last minute shopping done I decide to give them until after Christmas.

Just after New Year's Day I pop in and they tell me my watch is done, like it's been done for a while and why didn't I pick it up sooner? Anyway, they replaced the seals and the battery.

But, wait for it -- the watch isn't running now. That's right, it ran before I took it to them. So they hold on to the watch, say they are going to fix it and that they will give me a call.

Flash to late March. Still haven't heard from them (don't even try calling because they literally don't answer their phones.) I show up at the repair shop ready to demand my watch, fixed or not. After all, seven months is long enough to get a watch fixed, right?

But they -- wait for it -- can't find my watch. The guy looking is everything you would expect in a watch repairman. He has the small magnifying glasses that are attached to his eyeglasses. He's overweight from a lifetime of moving only his fingertips. And he looks like he doesn't spend much time getting ready in the morning before driving in to work.

This guy spends about fifteen minutes going through hundreds of stacks of bins, twenty bins high, looking for the one with my work order number on it. He finally comes back and says that my watch must be in the vault. My Seiko that I got for about $350 twelve years ago is important enough to lock in the vault? The vault that is so important only one person has access?

And -- wait for it -- he's not here today. It gets better. The only man with access to the vault is on vacation and won't be back for a week.

At this point it's beyond infuriating. I'm starting to laugh about the whole thing. So a week goes by and I show up wanting my watch. Mitch, our vault man, tells me without even checking the vault that they have lost my watch. By "lost" I guess he means in the building somewhere no further than 75 feet in any direction.

So Mitch plops the old Citizen catalog down in front of me and tells me to pick out a replacement watch in the $500 range. I pick out the watch pictured above based on the features that Mitch advises I should get on a watch that is going to take some serious abuse.

And that's reasonable I think. I'm going to end up with a much better watch. I mean, I liked my old watch. It definitely had some sentimental value, but this isn't a bad solution to the problem of my fogged up watch.

Flash to mid-April. I still haven't heard from Mitch who promised to call me when the new watch came in. Amazingly, I get him on the phone and he says that the watch will be in by Tuesday of this week. He asks me to measure my wrist so that he can size the band. Sounds good. Sounds promising.

Today I went in to the shop to give him my wrist measurement. The watch hasn't come yet. He promises he'll have it by Monday.

I'm think I'm going to have to -- wait for it -- that's right; wait for it.