Mari Ness

My father is one of the most difficult people in the world to shop for, bar none. Which is exactly why I found myself frantically searching the internet on December 23rd, which is when I found, to my joy and excitement and relief, his perfect present. I clicked. I entered addresses and little numbers. The website told me, in equal glee, that the gift would be shipped December 27th (accounting for holidays and so on.) I slept in joy and contentment and glee because I -- I had achieved nirvana: I had found the perfect present for my father.

Days go by, and my mother e-mails me with the note that the gift hasn't arrived. Grumble. I call. No one picks up. I get a nasty shiver down my spine. I e-mail. No one answers. I begin to feel a bit twitchy.

So, this morning while waiting for Important E-mail, I give the group a call. The phone is answered by a very nice girl. Here are the more amusing parts of the conversation:

1) She initially tells me that I ordered the item on December 16. If true, this in fact makes the saga worse. I point out that I have a little printout saying otherwise. They correct themselves.

2) She then assured me that the item had been shipped on December 16. I mentioned my skepticism.

3) "Well," she said, "it was shipped."

4) Except, of course, that it hadn't been.

5) She then told me that my credit card hasn't been charged yet; I point out that Washington Mutual, a more trustworthy entity at this point, listed the charge as appearing on December 23. "Oh, well, you were charged, but we didn't actually receive the money."

Pause.

"I was always under the impression that if a charge appeared on my bank statement, that meant that the payment had been processed."

6) By this time we had moved on to a new story, which was that the item had not, in point of fact, been shipped (I'd guessed that) because the order had not gone through until December 27 and they needed five to seven days to process the order and at the end of five to seven days they had been in inventory so weren't shipping anything. Also, the item hadn't actually been in stock on the 27 but it was certainly in stock now. I said that aside from the part about the item not shipping, which I was inclined to believe, I was not overly convinced by the rest of the story.

7) She assured me that an e-mail had been sent out informing me of the delay in shipping. I assured her that it hadn't been received. She assured me that their e-mails frequently got caught in spam filters, so, it had been sent, just caught in a spam filter. As far as I can tell, that particular e-mail account has no spam filters whatsoever, unless, by spam filter, we mean a filter that lets everything through and indeed welcomes and solicits porn spam. So I can be forgiven for being slightly skeptical.

8) Shortly after this, she said that she would shoot me a confirmation e-mail to let me know that the item was shipping -- which was when she realized that the website did not actually have my e-mail address.

"Hmm," I said.

"So if you'll give me your e-mail address now --"

"What I find interesting about this," I said, "is that one minute ago you informed me that you had sent me e-mails regarding the status of my order."

"We did."

"Except that now you are claiming that you don't have my e-mail address."

"Yes."

"Do you sense a contradiction in these two statements?"

Pause.

9) "I can tell you," she said, returning to bright and happy persona, "that your item will be shipped on Monday via US Postal Service."

I wanted to make sure I'd heard this correctly.

"By Monday," I said.

"That's correct."

"Not today."

"No."

"Ok. Monday. United States Postal Service."

"Yes."

"Even though Monday is a federal holiday and the post office is closed."

Another pause.

"And, more to the point, this item is supposed to be sent via UPS, not the post office."

"It will be shipped," she said, brightly.

It perhaps speaks poorly of my faith in human nature to say that I find it difficult to trust her.

I must say, however, that it's not the lies that amuse me here, but the sheer incompetence of said lies. Doesn't anyone teach customer service reps to lie convincingly anymore?

********************

Aside from this incident, today is going much better than yesterday, and I'd like to express my personal appreciation to the universe for giving me a slight break here.

The following is taken from actual dialogue from an actual conversation held this evening. Names have been withheld to protect the guilty, but no international citizens were involved. Except that it's entirely possible that I made a random reference to a European or South American country, because I do that from time to time. Enough introduction:

Other person: Follow me, little hostage!

Me: [actual words unrecorded, but said words expressed no sympathy whatsoever for the tragic and indeed precarious and deadly position of said little hostage.]

Other person: Stupid hostage! Stupid hostage!

Me: You know, this is exactly why domestic wiretaps should not be allowed, because of conversations like this.

Other person: Well, they are stupid. Is it my fault they're stupid and won't listen to me?

Me: I'm just suggesting that given the complete lack of context for these comments...

[more conversation deleted.]

Other person, in a tone mixing both cheerfulness and frustration, and you would have had to hear the tone to understand this: They're stupid, but they still have to be saved.

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City of Heroes: causing the NSA to perk up its ears everywhere.

1) Overheard at an anti-Hugo Chavez gallery opening show last night: "You have got to wear a red leather thong."

Pause, followed by:

"And they have them next door!"

(They did. However, although these were in theory handcrafted art items that just happened to also fulfill the useful purposes of being leather thongs and thus useful, and were on sale, absolutely none of us were in the slightest bit tempted to buy them because, and I am extremely unhappy to have to say this about a thong of any sort, they wree also hideously ugly.)

Many of you are no doubt wondering what the hell I was doing at an anti-Hugo Chavez art show in the first place, and I will be open and honest with you: I was at the wrong art show, which is what happens when two people spontaneously decide to head to art show without really checking for directions or, even more importantly, the name of the gallery. I'm still not entirely certain that art show number two was the correct show either, but art show number two did have more food, louder music and considerably cheaper wine. It was, we were advised, the Loud Thing of the evening, which was a perfectly adequate description, and, I may add, considerably more successful than the anti-Hugo Chavez art show.

2) I would be more inclined to purchase anti-Hugo Chavez art pieces if a) they matched my furniture and b) the writing on them was spelled correctly in either English or Spanish. Highly annoying.

3) The whole art show=dancing at gay club right afterwards is just, so, you know, cliched, but on a late July evening, sometimes you must bow to cliche and to the opportunity to dance with some drag queens, and we were not ones to fight cliche.

4) I must literally be the only woman in Broward County who can walk into a gay club and within seconds be pounced on by a straight Brazilian guy who was, he told me only slightly confidentially, looking both for a happy time that evening and preferably the happy time that involves two women and one Brazilian man. I noted that I did not think the club in question was quite the best place to pick up women for this sort of happy time, and, somewhat to my surprise, he agreed, saying that he was having problems finding "real women" there (by which I assume he meant women interested in annoying Brazilians) a statement that was overheard with interest by a very kind and thoughtful MTF transexual who, after thinking it over, agreed with me that we really ought to give him directions to a club that might better suit his needs.

We sent him to Cathode Ray.

You can look it up on the net, if you like. Skip the articles that look scientific.

All in all, a highly amusing evening.

I could be at home enjoying good conversation and two cute cats.

Instead, I'm not.

Let's leave it at that.

**********

Conversation earlier today:

Friend: I realized that it's not so much that he's an emotional black hole, but he's an emotional black hole with lousy timing.

Me, suddenly totally diverted: Is that really possible? Because if you were really a black hole, then you'd have that whole event horizon thing, you know, time stopping, so really you couldn't say that you had lousy timing, because you would be a black hole outside of time.

(Long pause.)

Friend: Do you know the meaning of the word metaphor?

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In a conversation about branding and Plantation today, a pperson looked at me, and said, passionately, "What Plantation needs -- what Plantation really needs -- is to be the place with Crate and Barrel stores."

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I hate CIGNA. But that's another rant. We're now with Blue Cross/Blue Shield.