Deborah Lipp

I’ve been thinking about the notion of executive function. It’s basically the part of the brain that handles organizational things. Because someone will tell you, “Oh, it’s easy, just make a phone call,” and your brain goes BLAH and you wonder why you’re going BLAH.

So here’s a thing that happened. I had to buy a gift. I went into the store and I picked it out. I got it home and I realized there was no way I could ship this sonuvabitch. It was a weird shape. So I went to the store’s website, figuring, I’d order online and then return the one I bought. Let them handle figuring out how to ship it.

So the website was down, but I managed to squeeze the item number out of the url before everything went crash kaboom blooey bam. I phoned and I had to go through all the hoops to place an order. Have you ordered before? Will you order again? Would you like to form a long-term relationship with us? Fuck you, your website doesn’t even fucking work, just give me my present.

So I give them the billing info and they read it back. The credit card number is wrong. I give it again. My name is spelled wrong. I give it again. My address. Again.

Now we’re up to the shipping address, and the same thing. Everything is wrong. Everything. I have a dyslexic order taker. I have a person who inverts digits who has decided on a career of copying down digits. Fucking fuck.

And all the questions. Apologies and questions and how many items do you want and are you sure I can’t offer you a discount card for purchase of fifty dollars or more and JUST SHUT UP.

So finally, he gets to my total, and it’s over thirty dollars. For a nineteen dollar gift. “What?!?” “Well, ma’am, there’s a fuel surcharge…” “You’re charging me fifty percent of the cost of the item.” “Well, the reason is that the fuel surcharge…” “I actually don’t care what your reason is. You’re charging me fifty percent of the cost of the item!” (My stern voice.) “Hold please.”

So, long hold. Long. And he comes back and my shipping charges have been reduced to $2. But he emphasizes six times, this is one time only, because I’m a first time customer. Six times. Nicely, politely telling me, “Don’t ever try to pull this again, bitch.” Don’t worry, I won’t.

Next day I go back to the store and return the original gift.

Gift doesn’t arrive.

I call the recipient after 2 days, after 4 days. Gift hasn’t arrived. I check the website. Gift, it says, was delivered after 2 days.

So now I call the post office where the item was supposed to be delivered. “Why yes, we do have a package we can’t deliver from that company.”

It was addressed to me. Not to the recipient. To me.

So, we got that all straightened out and the gift was delivered, and I looked at this supposedly simple thing I did. Nine steps. Nine. Some of which were highly stressful and took a lot of tenacity on my part.

1. Buy gift
2. Try website
3. Place phone order
4. “Renegotiate” delivery price
5. Return gift
6. Follow-up on delivery with receipient, find it didn’t arrive
7. Look up delivery on company website
8. Call post office, straighten things out
9. Let receipient know it’s on the way.

That was one errand. One. Of the dozens I may do in a week. It really made me hyper-aware of this whole area of brain function, I’ll tell you.