A Verbose Thursday
6 May 2010
So I had one of those moments this week where I did something, and afterward had the immediate reaction of, “WHY did I do that????”
I would blame the fact that the doorbell rang while I was putting McKenna down for her nap, which irritated me enough to open the door in the first place. Or have I mentioned I’m 30 weeks pregnant? Can I blame that?
Whatever the reason for my sheer stupidity, this is what happened—a guy came to my door selling magazines to earn points that earned him money for college, and I actually bought something. I’ve never done that before. Normally it rather amuses me to see them being all charming and sales-y until I say, “No thanks,” and then they morph into normal people and stomp away.
But I said, “Sure, I’ll subscribe to Rachael Ray,” which I love, but my subscription ran out, and I didn’t renew because I still have issues stacked up that I haven’t read.
He wrote down my order, then handed me a receipt that says 2 years of Rachael Ray, plus “processing and handling” is going to cost me $63. $63!!!!!!
A normal person—a person with a fully operating brain—would say, “Uh, no, that’s ridiculous. Especially since I can pay a 1/3 of that to renew my subscription.”
Rather, I wrote the check.
Then I mentally kicked my own butt the whole time I got McKenna settled back into bed.
There was a phone number on the receipt, which I called practically as soon as I got back to my desk. I thought it was going to take forever to get the order cancelled. Instead my conversation went like this:
“Hello, Yoli and Associates.”
(Insert me hesitating because I didn’t expect a living, breathing human being.) “Uh, yeah. I need to cancel an order.”
“When did you place it?”
“Like 20 minutes ago.”
“Okay. Flip over your receipt. Fill that out. Mail it to us.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Bye.”
Which is good, because being pushy and demanding my money back are not strengths of mine.
Apparently, neither is using my brain. Next time, I’ll just pretend to not be home.
My full reaction: LOL. No, wait, I have more. Right before we got married, David encountered one of those guys. They apparently hit it off. David subscribed to Car & Driver for himself, Home & Gardens for his mother, and got me a cooking magazine. (NOT for $63! LOL) The guy then threw in a subscription to Maxim on the house—which is not a magazine David ever would have subscribed to, and he couldn’t figure out why they started arriving, LOL. We got a good laugh out of it.
Posted by Roseanna White on 7 May 2010