Meeting a Deadline

Lately, the Mild Wife and I have been getting into plants and flowers. We've always appreciated having flowers of some type around the house, but it has become more of a point of emphasis lately. I can't quite pinpoint when exactly this change happened, but there are now more plants around the Mild Home.

If I had to guess, part of it was that we have been sending flowers to my family members more often during the last year or so. In essence, it's become more of a part of our lives, so I'm guessing that some of that energy has been directed to the Mild Home. I mean, think about it; if you peruse the websites that sell plants and flowers more often, it's more likely to come to mind when thinking about your own abode.

The funny thing about that is that it forms a cycle that feeds in on itself. If we're thinking about plants more often, we're also going to think about them as presents more often. We're way down the rabbit hole at this point.

So, it should come as no surprise that we recently decided that we purchase a monthly flower delivery for my mom. As the previously-linked post shows, the "we" in that is not exactly split half-half between the Mild Wife and I (let's just say that my dad correctly pointed out that this sort of gift was not happening very often when I was single). Still, the Mild Wife and I thought it was a nice way to show her that we're thinking of her, so we invested a little bit of cash into this.

As with most of these services, you could choose the delivery date. So, we planned ahead a little bit so that the monthly delivery would also cover Mother's Day. I mean, if we're going to send her flowers, why not make sure that she was covered for Mother's Day way in advance? That way we'd avoid the crazy rush, the jacked-up prices, and the potential stress of having to hunt something down. We figured it was a win, all the way around.

Little did we realize the folly in this plan.

You see, this plan hinges on one basic premise: that they delivery service would deliver when they said they would. When we hadn't seen a confirmation email by the Friday prior to Mother's Day, we started to get concerned. The Mild Wife called them up to make sure everything was okay, and then she had one heck of a conversation with them.

For some goofy reason, they did not have the order pending. The periodic delivery was not going to happen during the weekend, and they tried to justify this. The first excuse was that the standing order was for every 4 weeks, instead of being monthly. Well, that's not what we expected, but a quick glance at the calendar showed that in this case, 4 weeks should have been even earlier. Four weeks after the initial delivery should have been on the Wednesday before Mother's Day. But as was readily apparent to everyone, no flowers had been delivered on that day.

The next part was what really prompted to write this, and that made the Mild Wife and I laugh like heck once we got over the initial frustration. Once the person on the phone realized that the four week excuse wasn't going to fly, they switched tactics. I don't know what the exact wording was, but the Mild Wife reported that it was something to the effect of, "don't worry, the flowers will still show up in May."

Let me repeat that in case it takes a moment to sink in: this person claimed that all was right in the world because the flowers that we had requested show up every month on a certain date were still going to be delivered at some point during that month. I mean, if I could pull off that trick at work, I'd never miss a deadline ever again. Don't worry, Boss, I know I said I'd get this done by June 1st, but it'll still be done in June. I got you. Just imagine the look on a supervisor's face if I tried that.

Like I said, there was an initial bout of frustration and anger when they said this, but after some back and forth, they refunded that month and sorted the order as best they could. It was still late, much to our chagrin, but they did try to rectify things.

Now that the indignation has worn off, though, we can laugh about it. Don't worry, guys, I'm still keeping to my weekly blogging schedule. I'll just make sure that if I miss one, it happens sometime that month. That'll make everything better.