Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Who Can Use A Laugh?
On the left, the real gift. On the right, the evil imposter.
I think Parrothead Nation, in the face of great tragedy today, could use a smile. Here, have one on the ol' Crime Dog:
My lovely Parrothead daughter, the fetching Bo, does a lot of her shopping online. When she gets a gift for Joe E, she has it shipped to the Casa de Crime Dog, so he doesn't see it before its time.
So, no big surprise when a holiday lawn figure of a New Jersey Devils hockey player showed up on my door step a few days ago. So last night, Bo calls me and asks me to set it up, take a picture of it, and email it to her. Turns out it's an anniversary gift, and the two of them are headed off to New York City to celebrate this afternoon. She wants to give him the photo while there, and the real deal upon their return. Cool. So I set it up, and snapped a couple pictures.
Then, the evil Crime Dog pushed away the good Crime Dog. Trouble.
Pssst, hey Crime Dog! It's me, Evil Crime Dog. How about you find a picture of a New York Rangers lawn figure, and photoshop it onto the real one?
Bo and Joe E take their hockey seriously. Putting a Ranger in the photo would be tantamount to secretly decorating my house in Redskin crap.
So, I did it. And it came out really, really good. I sent it to her, and waited for the inevitable phone call. And waited. And waited.
Turns out she got the photo, and got royally pissed. But she didn't call Dad. She called the good folks at NHL.com. After chewing them out and haggling for nearly an hour on the phone, they apologized and agreed to send her the right one, but only if she paid in advance. The said they would send her a mailing label with which to return the "wrong" item for credit. In the meantime, she'd be out about $80 or so.
It gets better. NHL.com called their warehouse people to have them pull the whole supply of lawn figures and change the stock numbers, since this "Rangers" figure was evidently incorrectly packed in a "Devils" box.
Oops.
Bo was able to cancel out the second order. I think the quote from NHL.com was something like, "Well, that's a first."
As you might expect, the Evil Crime Dog hopes the word doesn't filter back to the warehouse guys. It'll be funny as Hell if they ship Ranger shit to Devil fans and vice versa all through the holiday season.
Sorry, Bo. But I swear this will be funny in a couple of days. Or weeks.
