Hidden Costs

It’s been a while since I’ve offered up any fodder for ridicule. I like to think that the simple act of finding my way through the complex maze that is life itself is at least interesting if not amusing and as you’ve already surmised, my somewhat predictable and possibly mundane existence frequently fails to elicit laughter among my peers. Yourself included. What’s worse: it frequently fails to elicit laughter in my own corner of the world.

Fortunately, lots of other things provide hilarity and I’m not completely reliant on my own limited resources to provide myself amusement. My wife is Italian, which is hilarious for both her and me most of the time. Our interactions are confusing for both of us in ways people who married others from their own culture can never understand – and the good thing about this is that the confusion we share equates to silly fits of laughter on a daily basis. I wouldn’t trade places with anyone.

Example: D is reading a book, knits her brow, turns to me and asks:

“What are horse feathers? Horses don’t have feathers. What is this?”

She’s a good sport, and doesn’t seem to mind that it takes me a few minutes of giggling before I can offer a reasonable reply. After we discuss horse feathers, I say something about knowing she was going to ask something as soon as I noticed her knit brow.

“Knit brow?”

As many of you know, we’re about to become parents. This is beyond exciting (and terrifying) and we can hardly wait to meet the little guy even though we know that as soon as he escapes his cramped quarters and emerges into the stark reality of this cold cold world we won't have any time to ourselves and we won't sleep even a little for some time to come.

One thing we’ve learned is that babies call for a lot of new stuff. Not the kind of stuff we already have around and can simply repurpose into baby appropriate stuff, but specific stuff that we don’t own. We might be able to use some of our towels to swaddle the kid, and among my shop rags I have a number of cloth diapers that have only been exposed to solvents and petroleum products a few times but apparently those are no longer suitable even though they look really clean to my untrained eye. When we were shopping for strollers – which are way more fancy and expensive than I realized – the notion of putting our old wheelbarrow to use crossed my mind. Wanting something a little easier to maneuver brought the idea of stealing a shopping cart from the nearest Winco. Trouble is that shopping carts and wheelbarrows don’t collapse for stowing in the back of the car, so these otherwise viable alternatives went out the window and we bought an actual stroller designed for something more precious than bark dust or bulk groceries.

D is really thorough with the comparison shopping. She reads lots of reviews, saves coupons (she calls them “vouchers”) and shops smart. She bought the stroller - which was priced higher than what I paid for any one of our three Volvos – for below half price by combining coupons and vouchers. We believe in buying local as much as possible, but with the amount of purchasing we’ve been doing, ‘as much as possible’ becomes ‘as much as can justify given how much this is already costing.’ And what we’ve learned is that the lower prices offered by, for example, Amazon.com, aren’t always the sole cost a customer might assume by doing business with this corporate behemoth. Case in point:

D found a number of items we wanted, and ordered them from the Amazon website. She placed this order on a Sunday evening, and the following Monday morning I heard a ‘bonk’ outside the front door. I went to see what it was, and as I approached the front door, I saw a young man walking away from the house. I opened the door, noticed a box covered in “amazon.com” packing tape and brought the box inside, then looked out at the young man again. He was crouched down near one of the bushes in our front yard, so I watched for a moment and noticed that he’d pulled a two-handfull sized clump of freshly blooming bulbs from the dirt.

He turned and looked at me, saw that I was standing in the doorway watching, dropped the bulbs on the sidewalk and quickly walked toward his unmarked van. I quickly approached; partly confused as to what was taking place (this seemed really out of context) and partly annoyed at what I thought I'd just witnessed. He asked “did you get your package?”

“Well yeah, but I want to talk to you.”

He got into his van and took off down the street, traveling well above the 25mph speed limit our neighborhood usually enjoys.

I told D about it, she went and saw the bulbs now drying on the sidewalk, and asked me to call Amazon to find out who they’d hired to deliver the box. We wanted to voice our opinion on delivery guys who uproot their customers’ gardens.

The first fellow at Amazon explained that the package hadn’t yet been delivered, and then asked what was in the box. I told him what items were included, read him the order number from the invoice that was also inside the box, mentioned that the box was wrapped in “amazon.com” packing tape and asked what numbers on the label might help us determine the shipping company’s [apparently protected] identity.

“That shipment will be delivered by UPS.”

“Okay, but what I'm saying is that it's already been delivered. It's right here. It doesn’t have a UPS tracking number on it, and the guy was wearing street clothes, and he drives an unmarked white van. It couldn’t have been UPS.”

“I can provide the UPS tracking number, sir, and you should call them to follow up.”

“It wasn’t UPS. I’ve worked in shipping and receiving, and they have brown trucks, and their drivers wear brown uniforms that say UPS on them.”

“Sir, please stop berating me.”

???

If we'd stayed on the phone a little longer, I'm confident that I could have provided him with a very clear understanding of what the word "berating" actually means. I'm usually happy to help others with furthering their education but I was in a hurry and this guy was a lost cause regardless.

So I called UPS and talked to a sensible fellow who told me that the tracking number had been generated at 4:30 that same morning and that the associated package hadn’t yet been collected for delivery.

So I called Amazon.com again and spoke to someone else, who asked what the order number was, what was inside the box, and was completely unable to tell me who had delivered the box. He reminded me that the box had not yet been delivered and I reminded him that the box was on my dining room table, and that the information I was providing was included on the invoice inside the box he didn’t think had yet been delivered. It was scheduled for delivery two days in the future, so it was impossible that I had the box on the table.

We went round and round with this, until I asked to speak with a supervisor. She (the supervisor) was quite certain that I didn’t have the box, and asserted that there was no way that I could prove otherwise. I asked how I might demonstrate that in fact the open box was on the table and the invoice I’d been reading to her was in fact in my hands, and she again asserted that the box had not yet been delivered. I asked why I would choose to spend my time harassing anyone over a scenario that was, according to her, completely without merit and she explained that she didn’t know why I was doing that. This cheered me right up.

“We’re talking about criminal activity that included destruction of property, attempted theft, reckless driving and speeding. I’m not upset with you, I’m just asking for your help in determining who the shipping company is so that I can follow up with them. Now I'm wondering if we should return everything we've ever purchased from Amazon. Do I need to file a police report?”

D shot me a glance that suggested I take it down a notch. Smart girl.

“If you want to file a police report, that’s your business. The package hasn’t been delivered yet and will ship UPS.”

“It sounds like you can’t or won’t help me. Is there someone else I may speak with?”

Click.

I sat on the phone for about thirty seconds, thinking my call was being transferred, then realized that she’d hung up on me. A supervisor unwilling to provide what I thought was pretty simple information regarding a package we’d ordered from the company she works for.

This kind of pissed me off.

So D called them again and got some other fellow, and started by telling him we had a quick question that I hadn’t been able to get an answer for, and that it was important that we be able to follow up. He asked her to read the same information I’d already provided to two other Amazon reps as well as the confused guy at UPS.

“Oh, sure. That was delivered by Ontrac. I have their phone number, website and physical address right here. Do you have a pencil handy?”

[Irony: D asked me to call because English is my first language, and she thought it'd be easier for me to get results than if she called.]

This cheered me up even further. But at least we were getting somewhere. As soon as I heard the word “Ontrac,” I typed it into google and found that they’ve made a name for themselves. Particularly entertaining is the discussion on the Amazon Daily Forum.

She called Ontrac and talked to their customer service rep, told the story, and the rep first replied with “that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I know. It’s crazy.”

“I’m going to have the manager call you back as soon as he’s available.”’

“Thank you.”

And he did call shortly after, and she told the same story again, and he apologized profusely, then asked if D wanted the driver fired.

“Oh, no. These are hard times for everyone, and if this is his only complaint, we just want him to understand that this is completely unacceptable. If he’s done this kind of thing before, it’s really up to you how you want to handle it, and I don’t need to know anything about that. It’s not about a few dollars’ worth of bulbs, it’s about stealing and damaging people’s property and refusing to stop when my husband wanted to talk to him and speeding down a residential street populated with joggers and people with children and pets. He needs to know that he can’t do this kind of thing.”

“What do you want me to do?”

D explained that we wanted a written apology from the company. That’s all. We want them to be accountable to their customers for their employees’ behavior, and whatever accountability their employees ought to have to the employer wasn’t our business.

The manager said he’d talk to the driver and call back, apologized some more, and that was that.

During this whole fun morning, we were also dealing with a Rescue Rooter guy who was busy unclogging the bathtub drain – the one that worked perfectly last time the Rescue Rooter guy was here two months ago but had magically become completely clogged after using the tub only once yet somehow wasn't covered by the one year warrantee against clogging from last time. And in keeping with the old saying that “when it rains, it pours” it so happened that he was the same guy who was scheduled to make a visit at my old house – now a rental – to unclog the drain there so that the utility sink might quit overflowing and flooding the basement. The flooding basement was great fun for the two wiggly and playful labradors that live in the house but the humans didn't share this enthusiasm for standing water. The Rooter guy finished with the tub, and he and I left the house I live in to see what could be done about the house I don’t live in but am responsible for keeping habitable. Habitable for the humans whose criteria are, apparently, more strict than that of labradors.

There is no money to be made as a slumlord. We get more in rent than we pay for the mortgage, but in the last year we’ve had to replace the furnace, the garage roof, the drier and the disposal. I just did the math and found that if we don’t spend any more money on that other house, that our rental income will allow us to recoup the last 12 months of expenses in a mere 45.8 months.

We’re way behind the 8 ball here.

“Behind the 8 ball?” she asks. I snicker.

The Rescue Rooter guy and I meet at the SE house and find broken pipes that have to be repaired before he can do any rooting, which has to happen before anyone who lives there can use any of the faucets or the shower or the laundry. It’s the pipe that takes all of the outbound water (except, thankfully, the toilet) away from the house. Important. So the quick rooting thing just became a thing that requires a licensed plumber with a truck full of plumbing stuff on a national holiday. Awesome. I settle in for the rest of the afternoon instead of the half hour I’d anticipated.

The plumber shows up, they cut out a bunch of the wall to expose soaked and rotting studs and mold and stinky mildew stuff, then find that they have to remove more of the old plumbing than they thought (and more of the wall, too), so they do that while I sample a vodka cran at the local watering hole, and eventually it’s all back together and working perfectly. I write check for triple what I’d expected and head for home.

I get home and tell D about my afternoon, thinking I had something interesting to talk about, and then she tells me about hers. A couple hours after she’d spoken with the apologetic manager at Ontrac – the one who said he’d call back – someone knocked on the door. She opened it to find a young man who looked about 20, and very nervous.

“Yes?”

“I’m the delivery driver you complained about.”

D pauses. She’s home alone, 8 months pregnant, with the door open, facing a healthy young man who may have just been fired and feel he’s nothing to lose. She doesn’t like this.

“I’m here to apologize for picking the flowers.”

She notices that he doesn’t seem sorry. He seems like someone told him he had to do this thing if he wants to keep his job.

So D explains that it’s not about the dollar value, but the act. That uprooting other people’s flowers is unacceptable, that refusing to speak to her husband and then speeding down the street is dangerous and illegal and made him look even more guilty. That if he wanted flowers and had asked for them, we’d have given them to him.

“I’ve never seen flowers like that and I just wanted to see the seeds.” He means bulbs, but whatever.

“You should have asked and we’d have given them to you. You shouldn’t have left so quickly when my husband wanted to talk to you.”

“I was scared. And I didn’t drive that fast. And it was 8 o’clock and there weren’t people out.”

“It was 10 o’clock and people in this neighborhood are out earlier than 8 anyway.”

“Well those aren’t your flowers. They’re on the other side of the sidewalk.” Apparently confrontation and apology go hand in hand for this kid.

“I planted them myself and they are my flowers, and even if they weren’t, you can’t just go pulling plants out of gardens that aren’t yours.”

“So are we ok? We’re ok, right? Are we ok?” Definitely not here by choice. The dumbass kid needs his job – which we appreciate and don’t wish to threaten – and despite knowing he was doing something foolish really just wants to get it over with so that he can return to whatever his comfort zone allows. D says something like 'yes' and he leaves.

We transferred the bulbs to a flower pot and brought them inside, wondered if we’d wake the next morning to find more plants missing, or smashed car windows or anything like that, balanced the checkbook to see whether we had any money left after hemorrhaging cash into the SE house and wondered whether this same driver will darken our door with any further deliveries.

The question, I suppose, is whether or not the lower prices we’ve enjoyed by buying baby stuff from a corporation headquartered somewhere that they benefit by tax incentives and offshore investments, staffed by people who live in places where a so-called living wage isn’t the same thing as it would be right here in Portland offsets the occasional frustration of doing business with such an organization. The whole notion of companies like Amazon is completely counter to our values – we prefer keeping the money in our own community, supporting small business, all that good stuff. The part that bothers both of us is that we’re in the position that our choices have to be a balance between what we believe is honorable and what we can afford. And what saddens me, just a little, is that we can’t afford to live our values more fully.

In the end, I find it all kind of amusing. All that really happened is that a customer presented a simple question that didn't fit into the scripts that the customer service reps at Amazon are apparently required to follow. The whole thing leaves me wondering: if these good people aren't allowed to think for themselves while at work, what happens to their creativity, their humanity, their ability to engage in critical thought?

And this delivery guy. I don't think he feels any regret beyond having been caught doing something really foolish. He isn't sorry - he's embarrassed. And that will probably lead to anger, and that will result in him being less able to empathize than he was before. I wonder. Did any of the participants in this silly exercise come away with any deeper understanding of anything at all, or was this just another opportunity for each of us to reinforce what we already believed to be true?

At least we have a new dish rack and another box of cloth diaper inserts.