Sweet 'n Sour

I'm a pretty firm believer that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Eastern Philosophy calls it yin and yang. So I'm never surprised when something good is balanced by what Stephen King refers to as a "swift rush of sh*t to the heart."


The sweet - I told you about the lovely prayer shawl my friend and recent house guest, Kristina, made as a gift for me. She knit it as she knew my father-in-law was passing, planning to bring it as a hostess gift. For those of you who knit, it's Alix's Prayer shawl, with Kristina's modification of the edging. I thought you should see such a wonderful gift, so I turned to a guy I know who slings a pretty mean camera. First, the full shawl.

Then the detail at the tip where you can see some beading. Isn't it elegant?

I feel very lucky to have such a generous friend.

Then the sour - we do a lot of sports team work. One of the items we offer are really nice trading cards. These look very much like the real thing you get for pro players. A bit pricey, but they cost us a good bit more than some other things we carry.

So today we get a voice mail from a man complaining that his son's cards only have the kid's name and team...no coach name, no height, etc. Our receptionist gets the message, and being a resourceful woman, she pulls the order envelope before bringing it all to me. Lo and behold, the dad hadn't filled out the section of the form that tells us what to put on the trading cards. We always try to call, but if we don't get an answer, either immediately or to a message we leave, well, we have to get the order off.

He had left two numbers, and I called the first, which was also on the envelope. I got THE WIFE. I tell her, very simply, I'm sorry, but they didn't get other stuff on their cards, because they didn't provide that information. She instantly got belligerent with me, demanding replacements. Um, no...the order form clearly states that they are responsible for filling it out, and we're not at fault here.

Now, understand, I am the bulldog in the business. The DH very sweetly tells me not to deal with upset clients. He knows I can deal with anyone being reasonable, but that I have this very odd expectation that people will behave logically and courteously. When they don't, they can pretty much count on not getting around me. They just won't. I own terriers for a reason.

Doofette tells me that if I won't give her replacements, she wants a refund. Nope, not our error, we're not refunding money on a personalized product...and let's face it, if it's a picture, it has to be a personalized item, doesn't it? Then she tells me we didn't call. We did, I inform her, perhaps having children in the house, one of them got the message? She quickly called me a liar in all but the word. She tells me they've bought pictures from us for years, and I should therefore show more courtesy and have called them.

Oh, really? You've been filling this same form out for years and you still #*($^# it up? Why not just tell me your IQ is 60???? and lady, we DID call. She says her cards had a misspelling last year, and we replaced those. Of course we did, I said, it was our error. This year it is their error, so who do they think should be responsible for that?

Now she's not even letting me get a full sentence out, and boy, is she yelling. If we did call, says she, we should have kept trying. I point out that with literally thousands of orders, we cannot keep calling day after day to try to pin a parent down who didn't fill it out correctly. I also mention some parents don't fill it out because they either don't know, or don't wish to list things like height and weight. "I can't believe that!" she says, implying yet again that I'm lying. Naturally, this makes me ever so much more willing to roll over and play dead for her. Not. She follows this up with telling me I should have pulled his brother's envelope to get more info, in case it was filled in (she apparently doesn't know!). I point out that with thousands of kids, I have no way of knowing if the kid has a sibling, and that his stats wouldn't be the same anyway. Duh.

Of course, I know she's really mad at the husband, who filled this out, and thinks his mistake should be subsidized by us. Oddly enough, I don't agree. Buy a clue. They're on sale at Wally World. Doofette tells me the cards are way more expensive than anyone else charges. Possibly so...they're also nicer. If she felt they were too expensive, I comment, I'm surprised she ordered them.

Unable to answer that, she then threatens to go to the boards of every league we're on and badmouth us, informing me that she "has a lot of pull." So do we, I respond, given that we donate back a substantial portion of our earnings from the league to them as a fundraiser! She orders me to call her husband's cell phone, "As his message told you to to begin with." No, he gave us TWO numbers and I called the first one he listed. If he wants to talk to me, he may call me, I tell her, as we're obviously getting nowhere and I have work to do. She says the envelope probably was filled out, and I tell her she is welcome to come in and take a look. I then politely say goodbye, and hang up.

There's a full moon tomorrow night. I say no fair on her getting a head start.