April Sweeps - Day 70

Somebody emailed me yesterday to ask if my email address belonged with my (full) name.  I immediately knew it was going to be trouble, so I waited a day before answering.  When I did, they told me they were one of my eBay customers, and that I'd mailed them an empty package.  They included photos of said empty package.  Sigh.

This isn't the first time this has happened, and really, I have no recourse whatsoever.  There's no way to prove that I actually mailed something in the package (except for the posted weight, I suppose, but even that could be a lie or a mistake), just as there's no way the customer can prove my shipment arrived that way and that they didn't take the contents and then fabricate the story . . . except that eBay always sides with the buyer.  I guess this is just one of those dreaded "price of doing business" things.  Still, it makes me a bit sad, and I guess I can just be grateful that it wasn't something really valuable (that, of course, has also happened).

I think it's the fact that this was a low-cost item that makes me believe they aren't trying to rip me off . . . but having said that, there's no way not to resent some asshat saying, "You sent me an empty package."*

No, I didn't.  Come on.  You're saying I paid to ship this guy an empty package, so he'll, what, get his money back a week later than he would have?  Actually, that's a pretty good scam--much more profitable than the way I did it, since I wouldn't have lost the items that I mailed him.  Sigh.

In other news, I went to the park today and forced myself to finish my pizza place story.  It's probably awful (which means I'll probably never put it out there), but I worked it through to the end.  I only got a modicum of satisfaction for this one, despite having wanted to write the story for a decade.

The weird thing about this March Madness is that I'm just going to have to do it again tomorrow.  I guess I'm reminded of the "Crepes of Wrath" episode of The Simpsons (which I think about more than any other human being, I'm sure), when the vineyard guy shows Bart how easy it is to pick a grape and put it in a bucket, then says, "Now do it a million times!"

But it sounds like I'm bitching, doesn't it?  Whatever you do for a job, chances are it's super repetitive and probably monotonous, and saying this, I remember this job I had doing data entry back in Los Angeles.  It was the same stuff, entering orders that the salespeople had written down on paper into the computer, and how there would come more and more until the last of the salesmen (who had the West Coast and Hawaii accounts) would go home.  We processed them until they were done, then we could also take off.

But there was something I enjoyed about it, seeing the stack get smaller and smaller, and I and my team lead processed the most orders every single day, until it turned out everybody but him and me were laid off when it was decided that salespeople could enter in their own orders and save the company money.  I miss that job, of course, as you always do when it's gone.

And I'll miss this daily writing thing when it's gone too, just like I'll miss finding something to blog about each day.

And I suspect I'm the only one.

Words Today: 2308
Words in April: 11,646

P.S. Each day I'm posting one of these.

Day 10. "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman.  I've talked about this before, and how I just didn't get the song when I was a kid.  But one day, as an adult,  it came on the radio, and it struck me like a slap just how innately hopeless the song was, how the protagonist dreams of a better life, but is trapped in a endless circle.  The bit where she says,
"I remember when we were driving,
Driving in your car;
Speedin' so fast felt like I was drunk;
City lights laid out before me
And your arms felt nice wrapped round my shoulder,
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone."
That moves me to this day.  She's also got a song called "Baby, Can I Hold You Tonight?" which also breaks my heart, but in a less hopeless for the singer and more for Rish the listener, sort of way.

*These things happen from time to time.  I understand that.  You understand that.  If the buyer had just said, "The package was torn open and the contents were not in there.  Guess they were lost in shipping," I wouldn't be typing any of this.  It's only the way he worded it that made me want to block him from ever bidding on any of my stuff again (the literal only recourse we have as sellers on The 'bay, as I've told you before).  However, just as this shite happens when I mail stuff, I've also had packages come back to me because the buyer gave the wrong address, or moved away, or went to jail for kicking a men's room attendant to death at a bus depot . . . and they never issue a dispute about it.