Dear Unnamed Cable Provider,

This is a cordial heads-up that you will soon be receiving a bill from my new counsellor.  The process of packing and mailing back my dad’s no-longer-needed cable paraphernalia, which I entered into with can-do optimism, reduced me quickly to quivering congealed salad. The responsibility for this can be laid squarely at your office door.

First, just as a side-issue:  Did you really need this stuff back?  Yard sales, flea markets, and dumpsters are filled with used electronics.  Are you telling me that your products are somehow different?  Forgive my friendly skepticism.  Plastic is plastic.  Yesterday’s tech marvel is today’s chuckle.  As heavy as this box is, your postage costs will far outweigh your savings in little circuits and chips.  I don’t know.  This just seemed like a waste of all our time.

But, to the point – the traumatic procedure of following the simple instructions printed on the box for mailing the multiple pieces back to you.

Let’s start with the warnings.

“Stop!” read a flyer in the box. “Check the model number on equipment to ensure the unit being packed matches the one on the shipping label.”  There was a definite “or else” implied by that exclamation mark.  Anyway, number matching is not happening.  I don’t have time to find and match tiny numbers.  No one does.  Isn’t your company logo etched into each piece enough?  Enclosed is all the equipment you gave us.

Next, I was warned more than once that severe fines will be levied for incorrectly packed boxes.  I’m sure you have your war stories about shattered equipment rattling around in unpadded boxes and the like, but your tone terrified me.  It was so draconian!  It assumed the worst of me having never met me.  As I struggled to understand the diagrams, I expected at any moment a jackboot at the front door and a blindfolded ride to the nearest gulag.

This was made worse by your warnings that severe fines would also be levied against boxes not packed within a certain timeframe.  Apparently a meter began spinning the moment the packing boxes left your warehouse and I, instead of standing ready with the tape gun, was out appreciating the first robins of spring whilst fines accrued left and right.  Naïve fool!  And since this was my parents’ account, it wouldn’t be me fined, but my mother.  Do you begin to understand the pressure?  Incidentally and ironically, my dear father, who no longer needs this equipment because he is now in heaven, was no doubt watching from heaven and nodding at the familiar scene.  Not one of us knows how to read instruction manuals except him.  He enjoyed them like a good novel.

In my defense, though, these “simple” instructions made no sense.  Yes, there were diagrams, drawn up by people who understand this stuff.  But don’t you see?  99% of your customers don’t understand this stuff; they just want to watch TV.  You need me to write up the instructions and to draw the pictures.  For example, you told me, and I quote, “Place the client in the Styrofoam containers as needed.” 

???????

Wasn’t my dad the client?  And what do you mean by as needed?  I take Tylenol as needed.  As needed implies an extended relationship between me and the Styrofoam.  And should I have known that one of the 55 gadgets I was attempting to tetris into your box was called a “client”?  Remember, I don’t know this and don’t have time to know this.  Call it a rectangular black box the size of an open wallet with two nozzles on one side, and I’m your gal.  The one thing that would have fit well in the slotted Styrofoam boxes was the 10 remotes, but of course they were an inch too long.  So they now rest, riskily in my opinion, in a vague zone the diagram referred to as “open area.”

It’s out of my hands.

As I trembled and jigsawed, I could well envision how this will play out.  You receive my box in the warehouse.  Daryl opens the box.  He turns to his buddy, “Earl, you’ve got to see this.”  Earl comes over, whistles his shock, and calls the supe.  “Boss, we’ve got one.”  The headman comes over and reverentially picks up my sweat-soaked, fear-packed shamble and hands it to Jonas, the wunderkind who makes the blooper video for the warehouse Christmas party.  Yes, my box will be the centerpiece, your laughingstock, and I your Joe-idiot-packer who can’t even read a clear-as-day diagram.  I am including a picture of myself so your mirth will be complete.

But it’s Ok.  I can handle being laughed at.  As I said, I’m getting help.  And good luck getting into the box.  My son grimly said that our only revenge was to tape the box up like Fort Knox and also, maybe you will get a paper cut.

Sincerely,

An Overcomer