Fitting For the Day

After lunching with a friend in Norman today, I stopped by a Borders to pick up an order I had delivered to the store. If you do that it doesn't cost to ship it, you see, so using the coupons they send you for online orders actually saves you money off the price instead of just eliminating the shipping costs.

One of the two CD's I had ordered had arrived, I had been told by phone, so I picked up the latest issue of Astronomy magazine and let the clerk know about my order. She retrieved it, looked at my ID to make sure I was me, had me print and sign my name and then handed over the package.

In my truck, I opened the package. I had ordered Romance is Boring by Los Campesinos! I had received an album ordered by a gentleman who lives in DeKalb, Illinois, Something's Going On by ABBA's Anna-Frid Lyngstad. She recorded it under the name Frida, if you're curious & don't remember the 1982 Top 20 hit "I Know There's Something Going On." Ms. Lyngstad these days is actually Her Serene Highness Princess Anni-Frid Synni Reuss, Countess of Plauen, by virtue of her marriage to the late Prince Heinrich Ruzzo Reuss, Count of Plauen, in Germany. That has no bearing on these events but was a pretty interesting bit of trivia I found in trying to figure out how high the song charted.

The Borders clerk hadn't ever seen this kind of mistake, so she called her manager. Her manager looked at my online order and saw that I'd indeed ordered a whole different album, so she called customer service because she'd never seen this happen either. After I spoke with the customer service person, I had a re-order for the correct CD on the way to me at no shipping cost, which is pretty cool.

As I left, the manager apologized again and said thanks for being calm about the mistake. I told her no problem -- after all, this was the right day for something like this to happen, wasn't it? She thought for a second and then laughed, realizing it was indeed April 1. Then she looked at some of the other orders that had yet to be picked up.

Hope I didn't jinx you, ma'am.