So – I was recently ripped off at the UPS store. A perfect little scam, which can easily be undetected or explained away as simple error.
I took a few pieces of oversized mail to be metered at the UPS store, the employee faithfully metered and placed them in his bin, then presented a receipt from the register. I never even thought to ask to see the mail again to compare it to the charge. The store makes the difference, and you never see the stamp, so you assume the charge for your oversized envelope is what you are asked to pay.
In this case, we are only talking about a few extra dollars per letter – $4.80 instead of the $2.35 of the meter mail. I had two larger envelopes and was charged about $5 for each.
I would not have noticed the “thumb on the scale” tactic – but for the fact that one of the letters was returned to my mailbox for lack of postage — it needed a few more cents. (!) I still had the UPS receipt, and I compared the charges. That’s when I noticed that I was ripped off.
I went back to the store and spoke to the same elderly attendant, who would not look at me in the eye, and sent the letters overnight UPS “on the house” to make me happy. As this was above and beyond the service I required, I was satisfied, and I could tell at this point he just wanted me to go away. (Why is it that I evoke this instinct in people?)
I really did not understand how an employee could benefit from such a scheme, since at the end of the day the amount collected would still match the amount received from the client. The only one that would benefit would be the owner, or indirectly, the employee because he can show higher sales and get promoted?
Who knows.
I did not frequent the store for a long time until this morning I had some items laminated and was attended by a younger man who had a name tag with the title manager under it. I told him that I wanted to relate something that happened to me in the store that made me very unhappy.
As I was speaking to him, I noticed the same older man who had scammed me come out from the back of the store. So the manager and I stepped outside to speak. I explained the situation and let him know I did not understand how anyone but the owner could benefit from this scam, one client at a time and with the right need for specific services that lend themselves to hard to detect overcharges.
“He IS the owner,” he said.
Great! So now I find myself speaking to the employee of the cheating owner. Probably lucky he has a job at all and I put him in this impossible position. I may have been righteous and unkind in my choice of words. No obscenities, but things like: “Once a cheater always a cheater…” may have come out of my mouth.
Whenever I experience a situation like this in which my judgement may be clouded by my unusual righteous tendencies, I like to check in with Tom. As I related the story, of course, he was not pleased, but was able to articulate another point of view. This is his gift.
First of all, he questioned, quite seriously about the need I have to go stir trouble, and what benefit do I personally derive from it? Second, whenever you enter into a monetary transaction, you have to be diligent, and you do have a choice to go to another store. Third, what if the guy is losing his home or his store, and doing whatever it takes to keep his people employed. So he scams the pretty lady with the nice ring a few dollars at a time. Everyone does it, right?
“So that makes it right and we should just roll over?” I cry out, grasping for any justification that comes to mind.
“No”, he said, “but you choose your battles,” he said. “Life is beautiful. Time is limited. What is the benefit?”
Tom went on to detail how people are on edge, and a client accusation to an underling that embarrasses a potential loose canon with a mental illness is all it may take to send the guy postal and have him show up at the front door to “chat”. They do, after all, have all of our personal information.
Notable previous Geri jihads included displaying righteous indignation against a Pakistani parking lot manager while I had the two kids in tow to obtain a well-advertised hotel/parking promotion; trespassing on desolate private property just to see the historic boat house we know must still exist when you are out walking alone (and no one knows where it is); breaking and entering into an apartment we owned against the advice of our attorney because the renter owed us money; the list goes on and on…
All are probably not good decisions to simply satisfy spontaneous quests for experiential knowledge.
So now I am home alone, with locked doors, and hiding from the UPS store owner…
Many people speak passionately when asked for their testimony. Mine came quietly on my kitchen floor, when I asked God to come into my life, rescue me from these sinful behaviors, guide me through whatever road I have left, and save me from myself, and the insidious impulses that drive me to make wrong decisions that sap time and beauty from life and may ultimately endanger our family …
Don Quijote and Sancho Panza. Any Latin person can picture these two characters immediately. Picasso painted them. Young children pretend to be them. The story of Don Quijote mistaking the windmills for menacing giants is ubiquitous in our childhood. It is hard to fathom that these names and images mean nothing to most Anglos. These are the King Arthur and Lancelot of Spanish culture.
As we are finishing the Middle Ages, we have found that Shakespeare wrote plays about all these dubious characters we have been encountering in our studies. There is Richard III, Macbeth and Henry V, along with historical fiction such as the Merchant of Venice and Hamlet.