On Saturday the missus and I went shopping.

And when I go shopping on Saturdays, I usually buy stuff. So if you see me come into your store on a Saturday, you really need to treat me nice. Maybe give me a free toaster oven, or coffee maker or something.

We wound up returning a couple of items at this certain home improvement store and while we were there, for some reason we decided to check out the appliances, which led us to the refrigerator/dishwasher section.

We bought a dishwasher because, well, the dishwashers were really shiny (note to merchants: this is pretty much the only characteristic an item has to have in order to attract me to it), especially the stainless steel ones.

The tall and helpful sales person came over to talk to us about our decision to purchase a dishwasher and I began to negotiate with him over the price but he wasn’t really very good at negotiating because he wouldn’t budge one red cent below the price listed on the appliance.

I left my wife there to fill out the paperwork and pay the tall and helpful salesperson. “You’ve got this, right?” I asked her. She grinned and nodded so I wandered merrily off to look at the Christmas decorations displays because they were all lit up (I refer you to my aforementioned penchant to glom onto shiny things) and I would probably have bought several thousand dollars worth of animated Santas and revolving elfin creatures, except for the fact that, just as I was letting all the magnificence of the displays sink in, my wife came up behind me.

“I thought you said you had this,” I told her.

Not quite. She motioned for me to follow her back to the refrigerator/dishwasher area.

So I walked with her back to where the tall helpful salesperson was standing in front of a computer screen with what looked like several hundred sheets of paper lying between him and the screen.

He wanted me to pay him approximately a hundred bucks to have the dishwasher installed. So, once again, I entered into negotiation mode. I told him I would pay him a hundred bucks to install the dishwasher but he had to also clean my gutters and downspouts.

Again he was unable to effectively waver from the original proposal, displaying his total lack of negotiating skills.

Finally, I told him to just deliver the appliance and I would install it myself. “It will be like watching a Three Stooges episode, only with one Stooge,” I told him.

So I went back to the shiny Christmas decorations and I wasn’t there two minutes when, guess who showed up again? That’s right – Regis Philbin.

OK, I’m kidding. It was my wife. She motioned for me to once again follow her.

This time the tall and helpful salesperson wanted to sell me a 4-year warranty for the low price of $85. He said that I got a 1-year warranty with the appliance, but it did not cover “electrical surges.” He said the 4-year extended warranty would cover everything – EVERYTHING – including “electrical surges.” I don’t know what an electrical surge is, but it sounds like it would frizz your hair up pretty good, not to mention what it would do to your underwear.

“Now let me get this straight,” I said to the tall and helpful salesperson. “If my dishwasher just evaporates into the twilight zone one night while I’m sleeping, this 4-year warranty will cover that?”

After all, he said EVERYTHING, right?

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a clause in the warranty contract that says if anything un-supernatural happens to your dishwasher, Superman will come to your house, apologize for the malfunction and then fly around the earth backward at super-speed, thereby causing time to revert to the pre-dishwasher breakdown period during which he will replace the dishwasher with a new one before the breakdown actually occurs.

But we didn’t buy the extended warranty because, well, my wife is not a big Superman fan and she’s also a cheapskate. There are two things she doesn’t believe in – the Loch Ness monster and extended warranties.

Ooh, which brings up this question — what if the Loch Ness monster showed up and ate my dishwasher? Does the extended warranty cover that? Then we would have a Loch Ness monster vs. Superman showdown, the thing of which comic book legends are made. I wonder who would win that titanic battle.

But thanks to my wife, the cheapskate, I guess we’ll never know. What we will know is that I can look forward to many happy hours of sitting and staring at the shiny stainless steel dishwasher.

Klonie Jordan (editor@gaffneyledger.com) is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger.