happy endings

I sign Alexander up for a two-month membership at a local health club at $119/month.  I come home and see an email for a Living Social coupon offering a month at the same club for $59 plus a free personal training session.  What should be an easy resolution isn't.  I have to:

• first speak with Moonli (the shamelessly perky and aggressive salesgirl who sold me the membership and who then makes up stuff as to why I should not use the coupon); 
• then speak with her boss Richard (who is similarly unhelpful and untruthful); 
• then field a call from Alexander whom Moonli contacts directly, saying she's confused; and
• then finally connect with Phil (at the gym’s corporate headquarters) who is more reasonable but still over sells.

 In the end, Phil and I negotiate a deal that works for everyone.

I went to a street fair at the beginning of June and bought two standard size shams from the W Hotel.  Yesterday I open them and instead of being 21 X 28, as the packaging states, they are 27 X 33 and too large for all my pillows.  I call the W Hotel Store and they tell me they cannot take them back; “I’m sorry, ma’am, but that was a final sale.”  “Huh?  You mean it doesn’t matter that your labeling was WRONG?!”  It soon becomes clear that Rene doesn’t want to deal with me and provides a number for the online store. Three phone calls and two emails have no result.  I try a number I find on the internet for the “worldwide corporate headquarters” and get Linda.  She really does want to help and her authoritative manner leaves no doubt that this woman knows what she's doing. She eventually tracks down someone named Laura in New York who works at the W merchandise warehouse.  Laura not only sends me a free return-shipping label, she agrees to take back a non-absorbing terry cloth robe I had bought for Alexander at the same time.  She will refund me for the entire order.  I love Laura.

My cleaners delivers a shirt for Alexander.  The doorman says it wasn’t delivered; the cleaners says it was.  I spend the day trying to track it down.  I approach my doorman, interrupting his reading of today’s Post.   “Who else received cleaning today?  Maybe my son’s shirt got mixed in with theirs by mistake?”  (This has happened before).  He becomes defensive. It is too hot to argue.  At the end of the day, Alexander walks in wearing the missing shirt.  “Oh, I picked it up late last night from the doorman,” he tells me.

I have an unopened box in my living room that has been there now for three weeks.   My handyman has been promising daily to install it.  Today he actually does.

I go to the post office to mail some clothes to my mom.  With one exception, everyone there is mean.  I believe they hate their jobs, hate every customer, and particularly hate me.  While there I buy some stamps. 

I look at the dour postal clerk and say, “See, you do have to smile now.”  She responds, “No I don’t.  My smiles are all used up.”

I leave happy knowing that mine aren’t.