When I bought our wooden welcome mat, I did so because of its lifetime guarantee. It was not supposed to last 10 years, 20 years, or only 30 years, but my whole lifetime. Yes, even if I purchased it as a newborn using Amazon Infant that orders products for the consumer baby based upon an algorithm that analyzes suckling and cooing noises emitted by the child when viewing screen images, the welcome mat should have lasted my whole life. Instead, this is the result.
Who knew that wood left out in the elements year-round for 30+ years would eventually rot? I can tell you that I didn’t. Not with a lifetime guarantee in my back pocket, or file, or somewhere. The problem is that I can’t seem to find my receipt from wherever I ordered it. I think that’s exactly what the company that foisted this defective welcome mat on me counted on. And they were correct. Although in fairness, I think I probably lost the receipt within a month of receiving it. The end result is no replacement mat for me.
From my perspective, that welcome mat should have been chipped with a sensor to detect any kind of decay which would automatically trigger a shipment of a new replacement mat. That’s the kind of welcome mat company with lifetime guarantees I would run into bankruptcy.
Instead, I was left with decaying wood, which is also a bad name for a band. Sure, I threw together a replacement wooden mat using scrap lumber, but it has no personality or unique aura. Zero feng shui. Also, since I built it, it’s a good bet to not last the summer. I wanted to incorporate the smiling sun face from the original “lifetime” mat, but it was split and the face was almost indistinguishable as a face, sort of like my face now after 2 more recent skin cancer surgeries. More on that in another post.
I have learned a hard lesson. I now bring in our new welcome mat in inclement weather and try not to walk on it. Once day down and a lifetime to go.
Jim Flanigan Looks at the World 