Confessions of the directionally challenged

I went to the mall today, and found myself surprised by the crowds.  There were people directing traffic, there were police surveillance vans, and there were very long lines at the store registers.  I don’t know why I was surprised at this – I mean, it’s just two short weeks from Christmas.  Of course the mall is going to be a zoo.

Well, actually, I do know why I was so surprised.  It’s because sometimes I am phenomenally unobservant of the world around me.  I find myself constantly surprised about very predictable events:  holiday shoppers and rush hour traffic and the gas tank getting close to empty.  (It’s not on purpose but for whatever reason, every time the husband goes to get in the car after I’ve been driving it, he gets about two minutes from the house before the gas light comes on.  This is not very fun for him.)

Let’s face it, things like “foresight” and “advanced planning” are just not my forte.  Unless, of course, it has to do with work.  This is something that confuses the husband to no end. 

“I don’t understand,” he’ll say, “how at the office, you’re the girl who always remembers everything.  You can quote entire paragraphs out of reports, you can state the exact date three years ago that a certain event occurred, and you’ve made a reputation for yourself that you are always two steps ahead in thinking of the client’s needs.  And yet, at home, I’m lucky if you remember what time I asked you set the alarm.”

I always shrug because, really, I have no good answer for why this is.

I do try to explain to him that it’s not personal.  That sometimes there are things I don’t pay attention to or plan out that really would be to my benefit if I had.  Take, for instance, my chronic habit of looking up directions at the last minute.

Actually, and this is kind of a secret thing about myself but I guess not anymore since I’m posting it here, but I have a really bad habit of leaving for a new destination and getting about halfway there before I realize that I don’t actually know where I’m going.  As in, I don’t even have a frickin address to this place.  Like, I just get in my car and start driving in the general direction, because I haven’t thought ahead further than the first ten minutes of the journey.

This is how, one time about ten years ago when I was headed to my cousin’s bachelorette party I ended up driving around for three hours before I had to turn back home because I was operating on the mistaken assumption that where I was going was due east of my home, instead of north-east.  By the time I realized how far off course I had driven, my destination was so far away that the party would’ve been over by the time I arrived.

Yes, that’s right, I left the house with nothing more than a general sense of the direction in which I needed to travel.  Which, as it turns out, wasn’t even correct.

I think that is probably the most dramatic of the incidents, but it is certainly not the only one.  Although, with the advent of GPS-enabled smartphones, directions and a map are no more than a click away.  (And with my particular bad habit, this is a definite lifesaver.  We won’t go into how many times I’ve had to pull off to the side of the road and use this particular phone feature.)

Speaking of which, however, I’ve got a company Christmas party to get ready for.  And since I’ve never been to this place before, so I should probably look up the address and directions.  Before we leave the house.  Yeah, that would be a good idea.

The $500 Chair

A little story of two companies, one chair, and a clerical error…

The company that I work for has a lot of temporary project sites, for which we establish mobile offices. We often furnish our mobile offices with rented furniture.

This past month, we closed up one of our mobile offices, and called the furniture rental company to come pick up their desks and chairs.  Well, when they came to pick up the rented chairs, they had a surprise in store: an extra chair.  A few days later my boss received the following message:

"During our scheduled pickup, we retreived 5 chairs from your location.  Since our records had only indicated that your company was renting 4 chairs, we have submitted the following invoice for the rental fees for the 5th chair, dating back to the start of the rental contract...."

The rental fee, back-dated two years, came out to slightly more than $500.  Now, let's just take a moment to reflect on this:

a) we weren't actively trying to cheat the system.  It's a big enough company we honestly didn't realize they should have been billing us for 5 chairs.

b) had we not done the right thing by returning the chair and, instead, just kept it -- not only would they not have been able to try and bill us for the rental but they would have been out a chair, too.

c) we rented a lot of stuff.  In the grand scheme of things, they shouldn't jeopardize their business reputation and the loss of a client over one chair.

d) that chair is not worth anywhere near $500.  At this point we've more than bought the darn thing.  Twice.

With these things in mind, my boss responded in kind:

"Although we regret that a clerical error on your part has resulted in the loss of rental income for this one chair, we feel that the good faith effort of returning your chair should suffice as payment in full."

There was a bit of haggling back and forth after this.  They countered and said, "How about half the cost of the back rental fees?" To which we responded, "No thanks.  You can still have your chair back though."  This went on for a few emails and phone calls until finally, they said, "Okay, when can we pick up the chair?"

At this point, you would think that's the end of the story.  Oh, no, it couldn't be that simple.  Because as it turns out, when the rental company came to pick up the extra chair (which we have now dubbed, "the five-hundred dollar chair") they couldn't find it.  We had set it aside so it wouldn't be mixed in with the regular office furniture, and when a different moving company came to pick up our mobile office they took everything - including the five-hundred dollar chair which had been carefully positioned inside that office.

After many phone calls and much disbelief on the part of the mobile office movers ("We always make sure the offices are empty before we move them") we managed to retreive the chair.  Only now we have to figure out how to deliver it to the rental company, becuase they won't come out again to pick it up.  (Of course, they won't just let us keep it, either).  So it sits in our main office, hanging out with a sign on it that essentially reads, "DO NOT SIT on the $500 chair."