Chaos Attraction

I Hate International Mail

2021-04-30, 8:28 p.m.

Today was BigBoss's farewell party on Zoom, such as those are. It was pretty good, all things considered. Then I spent most of the day dealing with mail drama again. Happily, the in-office staff got stuff mailed today (yaaaaaaaaay), but other dramaz went on.

Our international shipper unfortunately allows people to sign up to have Other Important Documents shipped along with the ones I have to deal with. I do not recommend that people do this because our other vendor is a whole less of a pain in the arse to order from and is much more instant gratification (mostly because that's in-house printing or electronic and something we can DIY). Also, the international shipper doesn't let them say how many of the darned things they want, just that they want "some," which is unhelpful. Adventure Girl usually deals with this stuff in-office and I asked her what she does with those double dip requests, and she says she just puts in one. However, I have no way to stop people from ordering the double dip and I used to try asking people not to and they just ignored me, so I'm stuck with them asking.

Why this is a problem, beyond the "they have no way to specify how many" issue, is that guess what, current in-office staff is apparently forgetting to include the double dip in there, and now I am getting complaints about it even though I wrote "WANTS OTHER DOCUMENTS TOO" on the mail spreadsheet. Multiple times. One of them was nice about saying "I just want an electronic one," thank goodness.

I haven't heard back from Orange Document Lady, thank gawd (I hope she forgets about the whole thing once she finds out she can't get it free), but Yet Another International Client is mad at us again--though my boss claims she was nice about it. I assume that was over the phone or something since I saw the email and she was not happy, but at least my boss is dealing with the emails.

Let's see if I can recap this drama: (a) First document is lost in the mail, because international. (b) She orders a replacement, wants it shipped internationally with special tracking so it's not lost again, which means it goes to our office first to be repackaged. (c) Unfortunately, somehow the old one fishes up in the office again and is returned in the mail around the same time. I do not recommend bringing up giving her the damaged first one, but am forced by another manager to ask her if she wants it, and she gets mad and demands BOTH documents even though Stupid Regulations only allow one person to have one at a time, not two. Snittiness ensues on the part of the client about this, I pass this off to my boss to deal with, she decides that a THIRD document is ordered AGAIN to be internationally shipped AGAIN. (d) Guess what, client got #3 yesterday in International Country after waiting sooooooooooo long and it's, of course, DAMAGED IN THE MAIL!!!!! Unacceptable!!! Oh yeah, and she also wants the double dip and nobody bothered to do that and she's mad about that too! (e) At this point, my boss has to agree to have a FOURTH ONE ordered platinum rush for free to us, and then we have to do a separate special shipping for the double dip. That website refuses to work for my boss, so I have to go deal with that one too. Feh, what a mess. My boss said something about this stretching the bell curve of problems.

On the general work Slack today, we had another kind of disaster situation. A week or so(?) ago, a girl posted that her father got diagnosed with cancer and she was going to have to leave the state to take care of him, where can she get vaccinated ASAP? Someone managed to track her down a first shot, at least. Today she posted that her father's in INDIA--oh fuck--and they want to get him out of there ASAP. They are shutting down travel on Tuesday and she was all "if he flies out on Monday there will be tons of people and taking off their masks to eat for 12+ hours in the air, what if we fly him out on Tuesday, it should have less people and be safer?" and I was all "um....I don't think so, seriously you may not be able to get him out if you wait 24 hours." Thankfully, the super pedant-y guy on Slack actually had useful tips and another guy who had experience with India chimed in, so hopefully they gave her enough tips to figure out....something.

I finished Shanna's sweater today, just gotta put all the ends in. I started knitting a shawl for the suffragist play after that.

After work, I hiked the greenbelt for over two hours and finished reading "Chaos on Catnet," which is darned good.

Tonight, I watched "The False Magnate," a play being done by Folsom Lake. They did a really good job on their last one, so I figured I'd check it out. Our YouTube(?) host, Betty, found old soap opera scripts to have re-enacted for you! Meet the Slippery Soap Players! With names like "Tony Pantalone." The people are beautifully filmed. There's no kr8tiv backgrounds like their last show (sigh), but they are working cheesy 80's soap drama and prom dresses galore and very hammy acting. And confusion between "magnet" and "magnate." The humans are placed close enough together that most of the time it looks quite reasonable.

"I think I found you a new fiance." Oh brother. Anyway, Daddy-O won't let daughter Isabella marry her boyfriend Floyd, so Floyd becomes "the false magnate" to get her. I love how he opens his vest and it says "It's me!" "Floyd!" inside the vest. Hilarious! Suddenly Isabella DOES want to marry him! After Dad gives his consent, Floyd opens his vest again. Dad faints. We did it in 12 minutes flat! Everybody dance now! ...And no, seriously, it was done THAT FAST. That's....super strange. I know they said 12 minutes, but I assumed it was like....I dunno, longer? Hahahah.

I tried inviting Redhead Sarah to hang out this weekend, no response. Sigh. I actually have no set plans tomorrow now, which is very weird. Like yeah, I should probably just rehearse for Shrek or something, but I wanna go out and I left the time open to see if I could see her. I saw fancy wine tastings happening, but that's not really an alone activity, now is it. Reminds me of the last time I did it, February 29, 2020. GOD, I MISS PEOPLE. God, I wish I could call up any of those people to hang out, but none of them are vaccinated to my knowledge (or if they are, they ain't fully), and also, why bother any more.

Hey, didn't some Pick A Card reading predict I'd hear from him by the end of the month? OF COURSE NOT. I decided to watch "Is it really over between you? The future of this connection" (#1) and she thinks it'll come back around and the separation will not last forever. Hahahahahah.

Note from November 2021: video was right...


previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry
hosted by DiaryLand.com