Roses are red

So, today my real post is over chez Pessimistic Redhead, where I cop to being a more or less supremely useless person and then ask the rest of you to join in to tell me that I'm not alone. Please go over there and help me out.

However, as usual I have more to say than fits into one guest post, so I'm briefly over here just to tell you that all those anniversaries that I was complaining about recently? Well, they do come with some perks. Namely:


My fiancé is awesome. That is all.

Third time is apparently not the charm.

Well, the time has come. I had to cave in and add a "flowers" category to my blog. I know I thought I wouldn't. My OCD standards for a blog category require that there be a minimum of five relevant posts before the category can be created. And now--unfortunately--I have reached that minimum with the flowers.

As we all know, my birthday was on Sunday. So Torsten tried to send me flowers, purple ones, to arrive at my office on Monday morning. Yes, he paid extra for guaranteed morning delivery.

I hardly even need to write the rest of this post, right? You all know how it ends, don't you? But I'm going to continue anyway.

First of all, let it be noted that the company from whom he ordered the flowers was a new one, Proflowers, and decidedly not the Company That Shall Not Be Named Lest They Find This Post and Send Me Yet Another Ridiculous Apology Bouquet. And let it also be noted that Proflowers is not at fault here. In fact, they were great. Better than the other two flower companies we have dealt with recently.

Anyway, Torsten ordered beautiful purple flowers, only to discover that they were to be delivered FedEx, which, to be fair, was not made clear on the website when he ordered. So, fine, we can deal with FedEx. But FedEx claimed they attempted to deliver the package at nine yesterday morning and couldn't because the elevator was broken. Except that it wasn't. I called and they were very sorry. They'd try to deliver again. The courier came back. Again, he said the elevator was broken. I called FedEx back. Again, they were very sorry. But there wasn't anything they could do.

I called my office building's package room and asked if the elevator was broken. I was told that it was not, and that even if it were, there were about nine other ways for delivery people to get into the building. Furthermore, I was told, FedEx had already showed up that morning and delivered a bunch of packages. Mine, of course, was not among them.

I called FedEx back. They were very sorry. They called the local facility, told them that the elevator wasn't broken, and requested that the package be sent out that afternoon. It wasn't. Of course it wasn't. So I called FedEx back. You might be noticing a pattern here, but they were very sorry.

But the thing that really pissed me off? They didn't offer a solution. They didn't say the driver could call me from down at the bottom of the supposedly broken elevator so I could come down and meet him. In fact, their drivers don't have phones. They couldn't guarantee that the package would be delivered. If I wanted to be sure I would get the package, I'd have to conjure up a car and drive way out to the middle of nowhere to their warehouse and pick it up myself. Which, I informed them, was not exactly how I intended to spend my birthday night.

Okay, I fudged the date a little. But they were my damn birthday flowers and no way in hell was I going to use good Zipcar money and hours of my time going to pick them up. And this was where it got frustrating. They just did not have a solution. They had no response. They understood that I could not come pick up the package myself, and--again!--they were very sorry. But they could not guarantee that my package would arrive. And they had no alternative proposal for how to get it to me.

It's amazing, isn't it? I work in a normal office building in downtown DC and the premiere worldwide delivery company, the one that people trust with irreplaceable, confidential, time-sensitive documents, can't even get me a simple package of flowers? After four phone calls? And they don't seem to care? I wonder how many private landfills they have filled with people's packages that just never got delivered because of some inane technical snafu.

And what really gets me is that this is ALL they do. They have a single service that they provide, and they can't even do that correctly. This is not the first time they have messed things up for me. My passport (not to mention my birth certificate and other important papers) sat in their warehouse for a month and nobody knew where it was--and when I finally found out about the situation, they tried to CHARGE ME MONEY to fix it.

And they once inexplicably delivered a package of mine to a building down the street--and the amazing thing was that once I figured out how it happened, and I figured it out myself without any help from them, they still REFUSED TO HELP. They claimed they would go back, pick it up from the wrong place, and deliver it to me. BUT THEY DIDN'T. And they didn't bother to tell me they weren't going to, either. Instead, I had to find the other place and pick the package up from them myself.

It is just mind-boggling to me that FedEx gets away with this kind of behavior given the nature of a lot of the items that they are charged with delivering safely. If anyone is interested in some sort of class-action lawsuit, or at least an expedition to find the Graveyard of Lost FedEx Packages, let me know and we'll see if we can build a coalition.

Anyway, luckily Proflowers was a lot more accommodating than FedEx was. Not only did they issue a full refund, but they also ordered a replacement bouquet to be sent. Plus the original bouquet, if it hasn't died from overheating in the FedEx warehouse overnight, is still theoretically scheduled to show up. Of course, nothing has arrived yet. But still. A replacement AND a refund? THAT is good service. FedEx should take a cue from them.

The Flower Saga, Part... I've Lost Count

So, I realize that most of you probably don't read my blog just to hear about my adventures in floral delivery. But something happened yesterday that I have to talk about.

Note: for those of you who may have missed the first parts of this saga, the story is as follows: Torsten tried to get me flowers for Valentine's Day and it didn't work out. Then he tried to send me makeup flowers and it still didn't work out. Then 1-800-Flowers found my blog and sent me free flowers as an apology. End of story.

Until yesterday. Because yesterday, this arrived. And in case you're too lazy to click on that link, let me show you a picture:


See how pretty? Yes? You do? So do I. Except that the actual flowers sitting next to me on my desk are about 23984387 times prettier than they look in that picture. And the arrangement is gigantic. Seriously, it's massive.

At first I thought they might have been in response to the comment I made in the last post about this, when I said I wondered why they had chosen to send the medium bouquet instead of the large. But then I thought, actually not, because these new flowers weren't purple, and I also mentioned in the last post that the other flowers weren't purple. (And no, 1-800-Flowers, if you are reading this, this is NOT a plug for you to send me a free purple bouquet!) So then I decided that maybe there was some sort of glitch, like two different people had been assigned the task of sending the apology flowers and hadn't coordinated with each other properly.

But then I read the note that accompanied the flowers. In it, the president of the company said that they "wanted to apologize again in a big way." And I'm pretty sure that wording was intentional. And then I emailed the guy who started this whole thing to thank him, and when he wrote back, he said, "Our pleasure--we took your point to heart."

So from that I've concluded that these new flowers were in fact a response to my point about the last bouquet being the medium instead of the large. And now I feel a bit picky and princessy. But on the other hand, I have another gorgeous bouquet of flowers on my desk. This time they had the sense to remove the card that said the name and size of the bouquet, so I can't know for sure that it's the large. But it is really enormous. And absolutely beautiful. So I'll take it.

Anyway, this (I assume) concludes the ongoing saga of my Valentine's Day flowers. And a good thing, too--I was thisclose to having to create a "flowers" category on my blog.

Humble pie

So, remember how Torsten sent me flowers on Valentine's Day and it didn't go so well? And how he tried to send make-up flowers a couple weeks later and it still didn't go so well? (Ha ha, like anyone could NOT remember that, given the fit I pitched.)

Well, apparently the thing to do if you're upset about something that happened with a company? Is to write a ranty blog post (or two) about it. Because 1-800-Flowers? Found my bitter posts about the flowers via Google Alerts. And sent me an apologetic email saying they'd like to send me flowers to make up for it if I would just give them my address. I was suspicious because, you know, someone on my blog asking for my address, etc. So I called 1-800-Flowers to verify that the person who sent me the email, a vice president of the company, was who he said he was. And I wound up on the phone with him. And we had a long chat. And he was a really nice guy. So I gave him my work address.

And yesterday? A gorgeous, fragrant bouquet of flowers arrived. In the morning. In a vase. From an actual florist. These flowers, to be exact (in medium--and can I just say that I find that weird? Why wouldn't they send the large one? I mean these are flowers from the president of a large company. And it's not like she even had to pay for them herself). The one thing is, they aren't purple. (Although actually, there are a couple of little purple flowers in the mix.) But I think that's because they only read the second post, which did not specifically mention purple. And despite not being purple, they are beautiful. And they smell really, really good.

So I'll stop looking a gift horse in the mouth now. I'm inclined to be a bit forgiving. That is some serious attention to customer satisfaction, there. And also, it was the president of the company who discovered my blog post. I like a hands-on CEO, I have to say.

So here's my revised opinion of 1-800-Flowers. They have two ways of doing things: florist and shipping. But they tell you with each bouquet which it will be. So if you order flowers from them, look for this image:


And STAY AWAY from this one:


I assume they sent me these flowers in part so that I'd write a positive post about them. But what can I say? It worked. Maybe it's the heady fumes of the flowers, but it feels like spring in my office, and I'm very happy about that.

Foggy

I have been verging on sick since the weekend, but it hasn't yet become totally unbearable. I'm still not sure if it's allergies (early, but things are starting to grow, especially in North Carolina, where I was last weekend) or if I'm actually sick. But I don't feel great. Still, I haven't been sick all winter, so if this is the sickest I'm going to get (and I am knocking on wood about this), I'll take it.

It has been kind of a cloudy week. On Monday afternoon toward the end of the day, Torsten IMed me to ask me if I liked my flowers. Except, ha ha, what flowers? It was like deja vu. It turned out that he had used the refund from the dud Valentine's Day flowers to order a bouquet of purple flowers to be sent to my office on Monday. And not from the company that messed everything up the last time. But they didn't arrive.

The gesture was totally sweet, and I am touched, but it is beyond unbelievable to me that they did not show up. Torsten called at about 4:45 and was told by customer service that there was no problem because the flowers could show up anytime until 5:00 and maybe 5:30. Unsurprisingly, by 5:30 there were still no flowers. So he called back and was told they'd be delivered either in the next five minutes or first thing the next morning.

Shockingly, neither happened, so at noon on Tuesday Torsten called back and had an extensive argument before finally managing to procure a refund. But GEEZ. What kind of bad luck do we have when it comes to flowers? I mean, are we cursed or what? Torsten seems to think so--he has vowed never to send me flowers again, except maybe on our 50th wedding anniversary.

Luckily, I did not have a meltdown on the scale of last time, possibly because just after this all happened I received a request from 1-800-Flowers to tell them about my charming V-Day experience with them. So I got to take out my frustration on their little survey. They're just lucky they didn't try to conduct the survey over the phone.

However, I'm feeling more positive today because I mailed the save-the-dates this morning. There are a few that we haven't sent yet because we are resolving outstanding questions about addresses or significant others' last names, but we should have all that information in the next couple of days and then we can get those last stragglers in the mail. I'm glad we did actual mailers instead of an online thing, though, because now we have our guest list in perfect order with no missing information, so when it comes time to send out the invitations, there will not be a million address-related questions to deal with.

And lastly in wedding news, my sister and I are going back to the bridal salon to look at my front-runner dress tonight. She will have to try it on because the sample they have doesn't fit me. But now that I've tried on so many other dresses, I know what looks good on me--and seeing it on her gives me a pretty good idea of how the dress will look on me anyway. So hopefully tomorrow I'll have a verdict to share between that dress and its backup. Stay tuned.

All wrong

I didn't think I cared very much about Valentine's Day, but apparently I do, because yesterday sucked. I was positive Torsten was going to send me flowers. The year before, our first Valentine's Day together, he didn't get me flowers because he thought I was the type of girl who didn't care about Valentine's flowers, and I was very upset about that, and this year I told him several times that I would like flowers, because the type of girl that I am not is the type who expects her significant other to read her mind.

So, I told him that I would like flowers on Valentine's Day, and I would like them sent to the office so that I could pick them up from the receptionist and set them on my desk and admire them all day and have other people admire them all day. And I told him not to waste his money on red roses because I like purple flowers much better anyway.

And I was sure he would get me flowers. I cleared off a space on my desk and I waited and waited for the flowers, and no flowers came, and at around three o'clock I finally caved in and IMed him and asked why there were no flowers, and then he got very upset because it turned out he had gotten me flowers but they hadn't arrived yet. And he had paid extra to have them delivered on Valentine's Day, and then they didn't show up until after four.

And when they did show up, they were in a cardboard box, because he didn't get them from a florist, he got them from 1-800-flowers, which is a stupid crappy website that ships you your stupid flowers FedEx, which is why they were so late because FedEx isn't a florist and they have no awareness of timing, like the fact that Valentine's Day flowers that show up right before you leave work DON'T COUNT.

And I didn't even bother opening the box because given the upcoming four day weekend I figured it would be better to leave them in the box so they wouldn't die, and bring them home and enjoy them there. So I hauled the box from work to dinner, and dinner was fine, it was good even. And I thought I was over the fact that I was expectantly waiting for flowers all day and feeling like an idiot for having cleared a space for them and feeling wildly, irrationally unloved about it.

And then we got home and opened the flower box, and it was just a crappy bouquet of pink tulips in plastic wrap. It looked like something that you could buy at the grocery store for $10, except that he paid way more than $10 for it, and also they were pink and not purple, and also they looked like they were about to die and a bunch of them were crushed, and what stupid company thinks it's a good idea to ship flowers in a cardboard box? And also the company guaranteed overnight delivery for freshness, but according to FedEx tracking, the flowers actually shipped on Tuesday morning and didn't arrive until Thursday afternoon, so that is almost three days in transit, which might explain why they were crushed and half-dead.

Torsten was very upset too, and he showed me the picture of how they were supposed to look online, and he was right that they were much prettier online, but even still, they were pink, ugly pink and I don't like pink, I like purple. In fact I fairly strongly dislike pink. And I guess he was swayed by the fact that the website said something about how they were cultivated in Holland, which is a bunch of useless marketing crap anyway and who cares where they were grown and besides, local flowers are the best because they are fresh and nice, not that it matters in February, but at least they could have come from a god damn florist who would have arranged them in a vase and delivered them in a timely manner.

And at first I was okay about the whole thing, because geez, it's just a stupid manufactured holiday and my fiance tried, he really tried to send me pretty purple flowers and even though it didn't work out quite right, I still have an amazing and loving fiance and it's just some stupid pink tulips and regardless he's going to call and demand his money back given that the flowers were delivered really late and half dead. So it wasn't a waste of money.

And then we were sitting on the couch and he moved his arm suddenly as I was moving too and he inadvertently whacked me in the side of the head, and it hurt but not THAT much, and yet I totally burst into tears and started completely freaking out. And I knew, I KNEW that I was being irrational, I could TELL that it was just stupid hormones combined with the stress of disappointedly waiting for flowers all day, but probably mostly the hormones, but it doesn't matter if it's hormones making you cry because it still feels shitty, even if you know the reason.

And Torsten tried to make me feel better, he tried to touch me and hold me and even though logically in my head I wanted him to touch me, whenever he actually did touch me I shrank away, I wasn't ready to be touched because I was just so frustrated, and there was nothing that could be done because all I wanted was for once to get some god damn Valentine's flowers that were pretty and showed up on time, and is that really too much to ask? And also the next two years Valentine's Day will be on a weekend so the next opportunity for this issue to be rectified is in 2011, and that feels very far away right now.

But it was just so weird, I was there being insane, being irrational, and knowing it and yet I couldn't stop it, I was crying and curled up in a ball and Torsten was being so supportive and apologizing and I kept telling him it wasn't his fault and I meant it, because it really wasn't, because god damn it he tried to send me purple flowers on Valentine's Day and what more could he have done? Except not order from a stupid website that ships flowers FedEx from a warehouse instead of working with local florists like Teleflora does, and now he knows, and 1-800-flowers is officially on our shit list and will never be used again.

But there was just nothing he could do, nothing that was right because I was frustrated by the outcome of a situation that could not be reversed and so anything that he did was going to be wrong, and so he just sat there impotently while I freaked out, and of course that was the wrong thing to do too, and oh, the poor boy. It just really should not be that much to ask to have a simple Valentine's Day that goes smoothly and involves pretty flowers that arrive in the morning.

And yeah, I feel spoiled because oh tragedy, my fabulous fiance spent too much money sending me flowers he thought I would love for a holiday that doesn't matter, and really, if I'm looking for problems maybe I should try getting some real ones? But damn it it DID feel like a real problem and still, now, the next day when things are supposed to feel sunny and bright again, I look over at those god damn crumpled pink tulips and I kind of want to throw them on the floor.