A Writer's Notebook, Day Nine-Hundred-And-Thirty-Five

 I have spoken many times of the way things seem to go wrong for me all the time.  Today, I had an experience that exemplifies the kind of strange things that happen to me.  To begin with, it is worth knowing that the events I am going to discuss are largely a repetition of something that happened a few years ago, when Melissa and I sent a gift of fruit to her mother for Christmas.  The fruit, we knew, would not be available until the new year, but the company had promised to send a card in advance of the holiday announcing the gift.  Of course, the holiday arrived and their was no card, resulting in Melissa's family blaming me.  I was told that these kinds of mistakes are very rare, of course.  Of course, it is only rare to the company, it is rather common for me, for example, as I was writing this, I recalled another, similar incident, where a gift I ordered for Melissa this past holiday season was defective and could not be replaced in time for the holiday.  Maybe I should not have been surprised to find that today was another example.  

Last week, Melissa and I ordered flowers from Urban Stems.  She had heard they were a reliable, ethical company, and wanted to try there service.  The flowers were a gift for Melissa's mother, who is in a nursing home in Ohio.  We've not been to see her in over a year at this point, and she has been rather depressed in general.  Melissa selected an expensive bouquet, and we went to check out, setting a Mother's Day delivery date.  The website warned us that they had a high volume of orders for the holiday and advised us to select Friday delivery, if we wanted to be absolutely sure it arrived in advance of the holiday, so we switched our order, as advised.  

Cut to this afternoon, when Melissa calls her mother and finds out that nothing has arrived.  By the end of the call, her mother is crying.  I call Urban Stems and am told that the flowers will be delivered next Friday, because, apparently when the site recommended a Friday delivery in order to be certain the gift arrived before Mother's Day, the order was moved the week after the holiday, and that is clearly ridiculous, and I know that it is going to be a negative judgement against Melissa and I, yet again.  The company basically refused to take any responsibility for the mess up, and wasted my time for hours today, not offering any real help.  The last time this happened with a gift to Melissa's family, her Mother's husband made a "joke" about how "we can't expect a Jew to remember Christmas," and I am not looking forwards to dealing with the fallout from this.  In theory, I am supposed to get a refund from Urban Stems, but that really does nothing to help resolve the impact of their failure.  It is just them washing their hands of the need to actually take responsibility, and leaves me in the same situation as before.  Maybe I would feel differently about this, but as I have said, this is something that happens to me all too often.

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