Today's story starts with something that has become very common these days: a delivery. Since the Mild Wife and I are trying to limit contact with other people as much as possible, we're often having things delivered to the house. We've found a way to do most of our grocery shopping online, so we stick to what works. It's not quite the same as going to the store, but in some ways it's simpler because we have pared down the providers and we can change our minds about items without having to trek across a store.
In this particular case, we put in an order from Costco to get a few items delivered. We do generally prefer buying items in bulk from Costco, because that's largely what their business model revolves around. There's probably a bit of inertia, too, since we used to shop at Costco before the social distancing and quarantining started to become a thing.
Regardless, we ordered a few items from them, including a set of tuna cans. We like putting tuna into our food, as it's a lean source of protein. It was also one of the easier items to get when the COVID restrictions started to come down, and it sort of stuck for us.
We were actually expecting a few items in that delivery, so we sort of kept an eye on it. We don't run to the door when something shows up, but we also don't want our packages sitting outside our door for hours if we can help it. Sure enough, the Mild Wife got a notification that the package was delivered, so we checked the area right outside our front door. Oddly enough, there was no package.
The Mild Wife checked a couple of the other nearby doors just in case a delivery person had misread a unit number or made an honest mistake, but it wasn't there, either. We were positive that the order was too large to fit in our mailbox (12 cans of tuna aren't exactly something you can squeeze into a small space), but we checked there, too, without any success. Our package was, quite simply, lost.
So, we called up the purveyors involved and tried to figure out what had happened with our package. As it turned out, the delivery company suspected that a driver had delivered the package to the wrong address. They would do their best to grab it and re-route it to us, but our package was in limbo for a bit.
After a day or so of phone calls and trying to get some status updates, a package did show up on our door. It had most of what we had ordered, including the tuna, but there was one notable problem: the cans had been dented. One of them sprung a leak as a result, so we ended up with tuna juice all over the rest of the cans of tuna. We were lucky that the package didn't sit out for very long, but it was still gross. I don't know if you've ever had to deal with items covered in sticky tuna juice that also smell like fish, but it is not pleasant.
This led to another bout of phone calls, and that's what ultimately prompted me to write this blog post. The Mild Wife was on the phone with the delivery company, and this conversation, roughly paraphrased, went down:
Mild Wife: "So, our package was damaged"
Company: "Sorry to hear that. What happened?"
Mild Wife: "One of the cans of tuna we ordered was dented and leaked."
Company: "Oh no ...."
Mild Wife: "And this was a Costco order-"
Company: "We're so sorry."
I don't know if it was the tone or the speed with which the person on the phone replied, but he made it clear that he knew exactly why this was a problem. For all that we were annoyed at the state of our package, we couldn't help but laugh when the guy on the other end made it super clear that he sympathized with us. He could practically smell the cans, and he immediately started working on helping us through what came next (we took some pictures and put in a claim).
So, at the end of the day, we got 11 cans of tuna a couple of days late. It wasn't the best reason for a funny story to happen, but the Mild Wife and I had a long laugh about the guy on the phone. Thank you, guy on the phone. Let's not make it a regular thing, but you certainly helped us get over our frustration.
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