As many of you know, I’m taking a very expensive medicine – 17 grand a month – to see me through my current phase of prostate cancer. Two days ago G the B ordered another month’s worth, and the delivery was scheduled for yesterday.
Guest what? Yep, you’re right. It didn’t come.
Gwen called the appropriate customer service number, which led to another customer service number and then to not one but two more such numbers, all of which were answered by AI’s asking the same half dozen questions, before moving her on. Finally, one of the AI’s said the situation would be looked into.
And, sure enough, this morning we received proof that the looking into thing had been done and that the med had been safely delivered to our door yesterday in the early afternoon.
Which of course was bullshit, because we knew it wasn’t there, in spite of the lovely photo of the large white insulated box with my name all over it and the words “REFRIGERATE IMMEDIATELY” sitting in front of the legs of a white rocker or recliner (only the legs were visible) on a lovely Saltillo tiled front porch.
Which wasn’t proof at all because we don’t have a lovely Saltillo tiled front porch with a white anything on it.
This led to another half dozen or so phone calls that culminated with Gwen talking to a real live human being who clearly was every bit as uncomfortable dealing with a human as Gwen was dealing with a robot. He took all the usual deets plus new ones about the delivery service (which was UPS; previously it had been FedEx) and promised the situation would be investigated and that we probably would have the med “soon.”
He was extra uncomfortable making that promise, but he did get it out.
Gwen relaxed a bit but couldn’t quite get over the feeling that somehow she had done something wrong that made her responsible for the, well, let’s call it “failure to deliver.”
Where was I during all this? Hey, I’ve written or produced literally hundreds of episodes of what used to be called cop shows, so I was out and about with Layla the Loyal, investigating my still beating heart out.
In other words, I was walking through our neighborhood (which I would have been doing anyway) checking out all the nearby properties that were on different streets but had the same street numbers as ours, and —
Guess what?
Right you are. There it was, it sitting in front of a white rocker on a lovely Saltillo tiled front porch less than five minutes away, the large white insulated box with my name and the words “REFRIGERATE IMMEDIATELY” all over it .
I looked around and saw several other packages on the porch, a clear sign that no one had been home for a while. I rang the doorbell and got no answer, took a photo of the box, and then, what the hell, picked it up and brought it home, excited by my successful sleuthing experience yet also disappointed because there was no confrontation, no argument, no chase, no obvious perp but a UPS driver who didn’t know how to read.
I showed G the B the box, and her look of relief more than made up for my ridiculous disappointment, and that would have been that, but it turned out that the case wasn’t quite closed. There was still paperwork – okay, phone calls – to AI’s and finally a human to do in order to call off the drug company’s investigation and receive the promise that this kind of aggravation wouldn’t/couldn’t happen again.
Although it it’s certainly possible that we might get a new kind in the future because isn’t that how life goes?
I know that a better writer than I would stop here, but that’s not me. I feel a need to come up with a moral to this story. My first impulse is to make is a cautionary tale:
“Never use UPS Overnight Extra-Special Delivery. Instead stick with trusty, tried and true FedEx.”
But as I think about it, I realize I’ll feel better if I shift the blame to what Aristotle would have called “the first cause,” AKA in my mind anyway:
Don’t Fucking Get FUCKING CANCER
Yeah, that’s the way you do it!
LB
(Thank you, Gordon Sumner, Mark Knopfler, and Dire Straits for giving us that magic phrase.)