What the What?

I found a water heater online this morning in an ad from the Home Depot.  I went in to the local store to see if they had one.  I found many that were the tall water heaters.  I need a short water heater.  They had a number of electric water heaters that were short.  Finally on the end of the row of water heaters three shelves up I spotted the water heater I needed.  It was perfect.  There were two of them.  I got some help and found that the price was even better for this unit than what was listed online.  I was even happier.  I was ready to buy but asked if the unit could be transported laying down.  The gentlemen I was speaking with said they ship standing up and they don't recommend laying them down.  No problem.  I told him I would be back later to get it.  He said they would have it on a cart ready for me. I said it would be sometime after 5.  All seemed well.  I got there just before 7 this evening and must have been forgotten. No movement of the water heaters.  No big deal, I'm sure he just got busy and forgot about it.  I wasn't sweating anything, they probably have a lot of people that say they will be back and never pitch.  The aisle was a ghost town however and help was not easily found.  A gal came walking down and I gave her the look like I needed help and she was very helpful.  She got everything rolling and suddenly I am at the check out with a water heater on the stock picker waiting for me to pay to load it on the truck.  The wonderful gal at the check out went and scanned the bar code to ring it up.  Denied!  This unit was on a recall and could not be sold.  Are you serious?  I certainly didn't freak out about it cause what would that do?  It was just a bummer that I thought I was in business and was looking forward to installing this thing and having a nice hot shower.  No such luck.  They did show that they had one more unit in the size that I needed, different model than the recall, somewhere in the store.  They looked but it could not be found.  The helpful gal who organized all my assistance saw me walking by the service desk and asked if everything got taken care of.  I told her we were out of luck.  She asked if I would like to look at special order stuff and so we did.  She found the original one that I was looking at online and said they could have it shipped to the store between the 29th of June and the 2nd of July.  I don't know if I can hold out that long.  I certainly appreciated all the help at the Home Depot and know they were doing what they could.  Bummer that there is not enough space for the taller units because they had a huge selection of those.  The only other bummer was that it was now 8:30 at night and there were no other options open for a hot water heater.  Tomorrow morning we will try again at the other plumbing supply stores in town and hopefully we will have a bit of better luck.