June 12, 2025
Always the Smugness
As always, it’s the smugness that gets me in the end. If only I hadn’t valued my superiority as somebody who’d never click on one of those LOCAL STORE CLOSING AFTER SEVENTEEN YEARS EVERYTHING MUST GO ads or buy a sack dress that turned out to be an actual sack. I knew enough not to buy soft pants that looked like hard pants, or tea that tastes like birthday cake. I could tell that the leather was really pleather and that the softest blanket other was anything but. I thought I was savvy, and I even was, a little bit. When the ad caught my eye—a basket for the bbq so that veggies don’t fall through the grill, just in time for Father’s Day—I googled the company in question. Where were they located? They had a street address in Edmonton. And possibly the red flag should have been the text I received from my bank after I made the credit card payment asking if I had actually made this purchase. But of course I had, and so I okayed it, and the transaction went through. SO SO STUPID. What was I thinking? $50 for a wire basket? Yes, it occurs to me now that the price is a little high. And then I got my shipping notification this morning—my $50 wire basket is on its way from ACTUAL WUHAN. But this was a reputable company, right? Um, no, there is another company with a similar name. The company that I’d just sent $50 to for a wire basket has social media accounts that are a month old and have no customer engagement. The address in Edmonton turned out to be for the Chinese dropshipping company will be handling the transport of my no doubt piece-of-crap FIFTY DOLLAR BASKET. I feel very dumb. Meta is a terrible company. And hopefully I’ve learned my lesson and will never do anything quite this idiotic again. [Editor’s note: she totally will do something this idiotic again, but hopefully not this precise thing.)
