Archive: December 2007

Last night, JG and I arrived at home after a whirlwind weekend at my parents’ house in Connecticut for our early family Christmas. Between Friday night and Sunday, we spent twelve hours in the car and consumed countless calories. Although I’m not glad to be at work at the moment, I’m relieved to be home, since the trip was somewhat grueling. I find it odd to go back to my parents’ house for an overnight stay. We haven’t been back there for over a year, but I didn’t expect to feel so unnervingly disoriented, as though someone had hidden the map, even if I should have known my way around.

Part of the problem was that I literally didn’t know where things were. My mom renovated the kitchen over the summer, so when I started to make cookies, I had a constant stream of questions about where I could find a whisk, the granulated sugar, a wire rack. I felt oddly out of proportion in the house, too. I asked if the kitchen stools had been shortened to accommodate the new kitchen island; no, they were always that short. The Christmas tree seemed smaller, as well, but that didn’t make sense because I haven’t grown an inch for ten years. Sleeping arrangements were off kilter because my bedroom has been turned into a study for my mom, which I don’t mind at all. JG and I slept in my sister’s bedroom, on my old day bed, which was weird all around. I felt out of place in my sister’s bed room, lying on my childhood bed, next to my husband, who certainly wasn’t around when I last slept on it with any frequency. Maybe it’s just strange to me to be married and sleeping in my parents’ house.

I think this disorientation is indicative of what continues to be an awkward transition into oxymoronic adult childhood. My parents and I seem to have trouble adjusting to the coexisting facts that they are my parents, but I am adult. Somewhere along the lines, either the system or I changed (or both, I guess), such that the two no longer meshed in an intuitive way. While I felt completely at home in the snowy, gray, muffled world of New England winter, my parents’ house, while comfortable and warm, was oddly foreign. I know that I have made my own world with JG that consists of our house, Ted, and our friends, but feeling like an exchange student in my childhood home was a jolt to my system, even though it was good to spend time with my parents and my sister.

As much as I don’t savor the thought of coming in to work all this week, I know it’ll be quiet in these parts, and I’m grateful that we can spend all of Christmas Day at home. As I sit in an eerily quiet hallway, I count down the minutes until I can leave at noon, and unrelated thoughts flit across my brain. Should we pick up rolls to make sandwiches from leftover turkey? … I wonder if JG has wrapped Ted’s gifts … I need to stuff JG’s stocking … Tonight, we’re watching A Charlie Brown Christmas! … I have to do laundry … I really should order a new day planner for work … I need to take a nap before the Christmas Eve service … I can’t forget to call my grandmother tomorrow … Happy Birthday, Kip …

I do the vast majority of my Christmas shopping online for a handful of reasons:

1. Parking in crowded lots full of strollers, shopping carts, and oblivious pedestrians makes me want to tear my hair out.
2. I feel more comfortable with an online interface than a recent holiday-season retail hire.
3. I’d rather browse on a laptop than on my feet.
4. I can more easily track my spending and to-get items with my spreadsheet.
5. I get a thrill out of checking tracking numbers and shipping status. (“Out for delivery! YES!”)

However, I am sad to report that the online ordering process did not fare so well for me on one specific occasion. Behold, a timeline of my frustration:

Monday, November 26

• 11am: Stumped for gift ideas for my cousins, I order a $50 gift card from Best Buy so that they can buy accessories or games for their beloved Nintendo Wii.
• 12pm: I receive an e-mail that confirms my order.
• 1pm: I receive an e-mail that informs me that my order has been shipped with the postal service, so I should allow 7-10 business days before receipt. No problem.

Friday, December 7

• Ten business days have passed since my shipment confirmation, and no gift card is in sight. JG suggests giving it a couple of more days, just in case something happened with the mail.

Saturday, December 15

• I have still not received my gift card in the mail, so I call customer service to inquire after it. I sit on hold for 20 minutes. The representative doesn’t quite understand how she sees that my order was shipped, but I haven’t received it. I repeat that I haven’t received it. She still does not understand, because it was shipped, right?
• I adopt my “don’t mess with me” tone and tell her what she’ll do for me. She’ll arrange for the original gift card to be canceled and a replacement card to be shipped to me overnight, since I need it next week.
• The representative says, “Ooh, you need it next week?”
• I snap, “Yes, that’s why I ordered it in November.”
• The representative promises that she’ll have a new gift card shipped to me as soon as possible. Maybe I’ll even get it today, she says. I highly doubt that, as the mail has already arrived.
• I receive a case number for my complaint. The representative says that someone from gift cards should call me to follow up, but I make a note to follow up on my own during the next week.

Tuesday, December 18

• I have not heard from the gift card department.
• Assuming that the request for the replacement gift card should have been processed on Saturday and then shipped overnight on Monday, I call customer service in the evening to ask just what the heck is their problem. JG advises me, “Nothing gets accomplished by yelling.” I say that I won’t start off yelling.
• I wait on hold for 50 minutes, simmering away.
• The customer service representative who finally takes my call is puzzled when she pulls up my order number and case number because there are no additional notes after the ones from Saturday’s call.
• In essence, nothing has been done.
• I am livid.
• The representative says that she will make a note for the gift card people to issue a replacement gift card to be sent out as soon as possible. I respond sharply, “Why should I be confident at all that the notes you’re taking would resolve my issue, since it is clear that the previous notes have had no effect? The fault, here, is not with me, since I ordered this gift card more than three weeks ago.”
• The representative offers to let me speak to a supervisor, which I accept. I sit on hold again. Unsurprisingly, a supervisor is not available.
• The representative says that she will make the notes she mentioned and put me in a queue for a supervisor to give me a call to discuss the issue. The supervisor should call me within 24-48 hours. I receive case numbers for my additional complaint and the supervisor call.

Today, Friday, December 21

• I have not heard from the gift card people.
• I have not received a gift card.
• I have not received a phone call from a supervisor.
• I am set to file a formal complaint with Best Buy.
• I am determined that they will fix the situation for me; I will not simply cancel this order.
• I am telling everyone I can about my experience, and I am never patronizing Best Buy again.

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12/28 UPDATE:

Saturday, December 22

• While I am elbow-deep in cookie dough, I receive a phone call from a guy from the “Research department,” whatever that means. He confirms that I have not received my gift card, which should have arrived between December 7-10, according to his records.
• I restrain myself from pointing out that, if I had received it between December 7-10, I would not have spent an hour and a half trying to fix my problem and he would not be calling me on a Saturday.
• Between 25 minutes spent on the phone and no less than three occasions of waiting on hold (I can only speculate that he had no idea what he was doing), the representative is able to cancel the first gift card I ordered and arrange for a replacement to be sent.
• Somehow, all of that sounds very familiar. Oh, yes, I have already heard it twice before.
• I write down the new order number for my records.
• The representative asks me if he can help me with anything else, although I can tell from his tone that he really hopes that he can’t.
• I say cheerily, “Actually, I have one other question. How can I go about filing a formal complaint about my problems in resolving this issue?” I receive instructions on where to go on the Best Buy website.

Thursday, December 27

• I receive the gift card in the mail, at last. One month and one day have elapsed since I received original shipping notification.
• JG and I go to a Best Buy store to spend the gift cards, in a ceremonial fashion, that he received for Christmas, thereby ending our patronage. As icing on the cake, our cashier is completely rude and off-putting.

Friday, December 28

• I write a detailed letter of feedback, employing every rhetorical device I know.
• I submit the letter to Best Buy’s electronic feedback form, prepare it to send to the corporate headquarters via snail mail, and e-mail it (plus a link to this post) to IHateBestBuy.com.

#87

At the ripe old age of seven months, Ted is on the cusp of celebrating his first Christmas! Despite my valiant online searches, I have been unable to find a cute tree ornament to commemorate the occasion; doesn’t anybody make something like a silver paw-print frame that is less than $15? I have only been able to find frightening and/or tacky Westie merchandise, much to my chagrin. Oh, well. Ted has enjoyed jumping up to nip the stockings, growling at the tree, and biting at the curly ribbon on presents, so I am confident that the holiday season is making a positive impression on him. He even persevered through an early-morning photo shoot for the sake of a bloggy Christmas card, which is a clear sign that Ted wishes the entire blogosphere a very merry Christmas, indeed.

Come and get your (almost) daily dog dose with Rufus, Ben, Gus, and Zapp!

When I was a child, my parents never introduced Santa Claus to my sister or me. We went shopping with my parents during December, so the source of people’s presents was perfectly clear. As the gifts were purchased, they were wrapped and placed under the tree throughout the month, and it was exciting to see the bounty of packages build up. Stockings were our one concession to popular Christmas lore, and we received things like travel-sized lotion, Chapstick, and floss in ours. This mythical Santa Claus was more of an “other people” concept; my sister and I simply accepted that other kids and other parents told each other this story, even if we didn’t do the same at our house, kind of like eating Lucky Charms. Mom warned us not to broach the subject of Santa Claus at school, lest we interfere with this familial conversation, so we didn’t let it slip that we didn’t believe in Santa Claus.

As an adult, the perpetuating story of Santa Claus still mystifies me. When I went to my first Thanksgiving with JG, I unknowingly opened a can of worms with the college-aged cousins by asking, “So, what’s the deal with Santa Claus? Is he a fairy, or what?”

“He’s not a fairy!”

“He’s a magical person!”

“Haven’t you ever seen The Santa Clause?”

“You were such a deprived child!”

Whoa.

Despite wild gesticulation, passionate rhetoric, and high volume, I was unable to grasp the childlike wonder that people associate with a belief in Santa Claus. Because I had never bought in, I was branded a cynic. The idea that Santa would watch over kids and mark down wrongs and rights was downright creepy, and no one seemed to mind that the North Pole has no viable landmass for a factory. Isn’t it at least understandable that an overweight, sweatshop-owning, speed-limit-breaking, cookie-stealing trespasser is hardly a comforting image, regardless of the quantity or quality of presents? Granted, I have a certain bias against breaking and entering because our house was burglarized when I was four, but still…

Outside of the “magic of Santa Claus” — which I interpret to mean breaking the sound barrier in a non-FTA-approved vehicle — my greatest conundrum regarding Santa Claus is that adults continue to insist on his existence among each other. My particular confusion excludes any type of child-storytelling, though that is a mystery on its own. What is it about Santa Claus that provokes twenty-year-old cousins to stand up, shake their fists, and cite Disney movies as proof of their beliefs? What is it that makes me have to thank Santa Claus when I know that the gift was from my mother-in-law, despite what the gift tag says? Is it an effort to recapture some idyllic time of innocence when “magical people” in sleighs were possible? Or is Santa Claus simply something to debate, like the echoes in “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or how exactly Frosty could ever come “back again someday”?

Frankly, my world was less complicated before I contemplated the existence of Santa Claus, thank you very much.