So wrong on so many levels

Sometimes I'm dumbfounded at the toys that make it to market, though I'm not sure this one's legit. This one's just wrong, and dad looks a little too eager to get peed on.

Why DHL Sucks

I've ordered a number of things online over the past several years, and generally have had good experiences with both vendors and shipping services. As a rule, I usually will have things delivered to me at my work address so that an unattended box is not sitting on my front porch during the day, just waiting for some little shit to come steal it. That's not very likely in the neighborhood where we live now, but when I first started ordering online back in 2001, having a box stolen off our porch was very likely where we were living at the time.

After the New York Giants won the Super Bowl this year, I waited a few days before going online to order up a t-shirt commemorating their victory. It's a tradition in this country to attach our egos to sporting teams by wearing shirts like that, and this was one of those occasions where I fully wanted to participate in that tradition. The Wednesday after the Super Bowl I went the Giants' online store and ordered a championship t-shirt. I chose the shipping option that should have it in my hands in about ten days, and I wanted it delivered to my work address. My online order done, I patiently waited for my order.

And waited.

And waited.

After 10 days I logged back on the Giants' store to check the status of my order. It had shipped a couple of days after I had placed my order. To my dismay, the shipper was DHL. The tracking link gave even more bad news. My order had been delivered two days prior.

Of all the shipping services I've been subjected to, DHL totally sucks. When my sister-in-law signed me up for a microbrew beer club a couple of Christmases ago, it was DHL who delivered the boxes of beer--or tried to at least. Because of the nature of the packages, my beer deliveries required an adult signature. Did DHL attempt to deliver after 5 pm when an adult would be home? Hell, no! They tried to deliver most of my boxes around 11:30 in the morning. Farktards!

So with no t-shirt delivered to me but with a status stating that it had, I called DHL to find out where the hell my package was. The customer service rep was marginally cordial, and but surprised when I countered her claim that the package had been delivered and signed for. I had done my homework. Prior to calling them I had contacted the unit on campus that receives deliveries from various shipping companies. They had not received anything for me, and not only did the person who allegedly signed for the package not work there, there's no such person at all employed on this campus.

The next step was being transferred to the local office and a conversation with the manager there. He would contact the driver who delivered it and get back with me. A week later, I get a call back with an explanation that he delivered it to the central receiving office--the same people who had already told me they never received it. Then comes the kicker: he tells me they have to deliver there because they're not allowed to deliver on campus.

In the spirit of football, I'm throwing a flag on that play, the call: Bullshit! Twenty minutes ago we received in our department a shipment of four boxes. The company that delivered it? DHL. So much for not being allowed on campus. Crappy service and they lie like a cheap, seven dollar WalMart rug.

Eventually I got my money back, but the moral of the story here is, if you're ordering something online, make sure they don't ship via DHL. I'll never order from anyone who uses them. Now I have to go to New York to get my damned Giants Super Bowl championship t-shirt.

It's not always intuitive

Sometimes things are just not as they appear. Sometimes our intuition says that something must be so, but it just doesn't turn out as we expect. I was reminded about that recently in a story that a friend of mine told me. He and his wife are on a mission to get back in shape this year, and so have purchased all the accoutrement's necessary for exercising. One evening his wife was online and wanted to go to the website for Dicks Sporting Goods. Naturally her intuition told her that the web addy should, by all accounts, be www.dicks.com. Don't go to that address as it's not the URL for Dick's Sporting Goods. Rather than being greeted by a site full of listings for sporting goods, she was treated to a site displaying penises, nothing but penises and lots of them. Needless to say she was really embarrassed by what she saw and immediately went to another website. Clearly she wasn't looking for golf or badminton equipment, as I'm sure there were plenty of shafts and shuttlecocks ready for her perusal.

I'm an idiot

Or so my boss apparently thinks I am. This morning I had to distribute info sheets to my fellow staffers with our raises for next year. To describe our raises as a pittance would be an understated insult to the word, "pittance." What we'll do with the extra $50 a month (after taxes) we'll never know...perhaps purchase half a tank of gas?

But what irked me was the cover memo my boss included with our info sheets. The raises for staff were a meek 3%, to which the memo reminded us that our higher paid faculty, including my boss, were also held to that 3% standard. Now, I didn't earn membership in five different academic honorary societies because I'm a complete and total farktard. A quick calculation of a 3% raise for my boss reveals that his salary increase in total is five times what mine is. The poor baby! He already makes plenty of money doing God knows what (I do a lot of his work for him), so I certainly hope he can make ends meet with his raise. But I'm an idiot...what do I know?