October 8, 2021
Dear Everyone:
I’ve been ordering
things online for (literally) many years.
In fact, way back when it was something new, and I wondered if a
certain purveyor had started a website, I tried looking it up at work.
I just wanted to know if they had a site yet.
Did I mention that this particular merchant sold only products
for women?
Imagine my chagrin
when the Company IT department automatically informed me, stridently,
that I had violated Company standards by attempting to interface with a
forbidden site. Later, just
out of curiosity, I tried going to another purveyor, one who specialized
in men’s fashions.
No problem.
I tried another
merchant site, one specializing in men’s fashions again.
Again, no problem.
Then I tried a site
that offered products for both genders.
No problem.
In fact, the only
thing “forbidden” by the original site was that it sold products only
likely to be purchased by women.
Yet another example of the Company’s unconscious bias against a
certain gender.
Meanwhile, I bought a
computer to use at home, where I could search the Internet to my heart’s
content without the risk of shocking the Company’s IT department.
These days, ordering
things online is easy. In
fact, it can be more convenient, particularly when I am still crippled
by the Mysterious Thing That Happened to My Leg.
It generally is more
convenient, except for when your Item is delivered to the wrong address.
One time, I had made an online purchase and began to wonder when
it was going to be delivered.
Some checking told me
that the Postal Service had already “delivered” it, but not to me.
When I took a printout of the delivery “notice” to the local
branch, I was informed that it was much too late to begin a trace.
So I was out of about
$80 worth of new underwear.
If you think that’s an extravagant amount of money to spend, you just
haven’t priced quality underwear recently.
Another time, I got
home from somewhere and found a notice glued to my front door, informing
me that my Item had been dropped over the patio fence.
Sure enough, there was a very large, very heavy cardboard box on
my patio. Only problem was,
I hadn’t ordered it. It
wasn’t even addressed to me.
Turned out it belonged to another resident in a different building, in
an upstairs unit. I guess
dropping it over my patio fence was easier for the delivery driver than
hauling it up the stairs hundreds of yards away.
In the past couple of
years, as ordering online has become more common with me, I started (of
course!) a database to keep track of what was ordered, when it was
ordered, from whom, when it was expected and when it was actually
delivered. This has resulted
in the happy coincidence that none of my purchases has gone wandering
off on its own of late.
Naturally, entering
all this information into the database is an extra chore for me.
But it does offer Peace of Mind, knowing what things I ordered
and when to expect them. And
that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |