Because Isaac joined a bowling league in 2023, I ordered him a personalized bowling ball ornament. He loves bowling! I chose a vendor on Etsy (what a great way to support a small business) and placed the order December 5.
The seller shipped the ornament December 7. A few days later it arrived in Des Moines. Then it vanished into thin air.
I contacted the seller December 12 to say the package was in transit indefinitely. She wasn't concerned.
Rinse and repeat.
Two weeks later, I asked if she could hunt down the package since it was insured. She had all of the information. Crickets. I finally filed a missing mail search request with the USPS. In order to do so, I needed her name and address, which she provided.
I never received any information from USPS and assumed they hadn't found it.
On January 8, I requested a refund.
Immediately after doing so, I received a response from the seller indicating the package was returned to her the day before. Hmmm. Why hadn't she mentioned this?
She said she would ship it out. I asked for tracking information.
Five days passed. I was super direct. I asked what was going on. I told her what a disappointing experience this had been. I told her I was unhappy. I had smoke coming out of my ears.
Well, she had just returned from a family emergency and would send it the next day.
Believe me, I wasn't holding my breath. But I was experiencing a family emergency, too, waiting for this arrival.
Today--January 19--I received the package in the mail. It took 45 days from the order date to appear in our mailbox!
I told Noah that the experience was so terrible (the seller never apologized for the delay or thanked me for my patience I was running out of) that I almost wanted to toss the thing in the garbage.
"Every year when I see this ornament, I'm going to be reminded of this fiasco," I said.
I'm very sensitive to energy, and I didn't know if I wanted to keep the damn thing in the house. It felt like it was covered with bad juju. It felt like it had been created on a throne of lies.
I had already gotten Isaac a different ornament prior to Xmas, purchased locally from a small business. He didn't seem to like it much, but it's hard to know how he feels sometimes.
I opened the package. Noah looked at it and said he was underwhelmed. Yeah, me too.
"It's very meh," he said. It didn't look like what I had expected.
That was a perfect idea.
I picked up Isaac from work. On the way home, I told him his bowling ball ornament had arrived. In typical Isaac fashion, he didn't respond.
When we got home, he looked it over and carried it into the living room. He was nonplussed.
"If you want to keep it, we'll keep it and put it on the Christmas tree. If you don't want it, just put it in the garbage."
He looked at me quizzically, as if to say, "Are you serious?"
I repeated myself and said I didn't care. It was his choice.
A moment later, Isaac shot me another glance and nonchalantly tossed it into the garbage. He looked back at me with no expression whatsoever, but I knew what he meant.
He knows what is going on. This is a shitty ornament. It was a bad experience. What a hassle. As Isaac would say, "No thank you please."
I've never been so happy to see a $17 purchase land next to a banana peel.
Tonight I asked him if he was happy to have thrown the ornament away.
He smiled really big. "Yessss!" he said. I saw a twinkle in his eye.
"I'm glad, too," I said, laughing.
He raised his hand in the air, and I gave him a high five.