let the dancing begin

Tonight was the first of a series of swing dance lessons. Yes, I want to learn to swing dance. Then I'll be able to go dancing at the Derby with Jenny and friends. The first lesson was a little intimidating because most of the people in the class are over 40 and have taken swing lessons before. Also, I found out that despite numerous people's claims there are not in fact more women than men at the dance lessons. There was a shortage of women. So, I had to sit out every few rotations. Fortunately both assistants were female and would sometimes dance with me while I had no partner.

Often I find myself frustrated and critical of companies I deal with. However, today I want to comment on a couple really good experiences I had. I ordered something from Office Depot online, but their website was having trouble and somehow the item got double ordered. The items arrived before I had the chance to object, so I opened up one and looked for a phone number to call in my complaint. Normally, the only phone number any company lists is for the totally-useless-people-department, also known as "sales engineers". These people can only do two things: 1) sell you more of the product you're trying to return, 2) transfer you to the wrong number. If you manage to get passed the sales people you end up talking with the only-slightly-less-useless-customer-service-department. Should you ask for anything more complicated than an order confirmation they'll respond as if you requested heavy artillery support for invading Switzerland and transfer you once again. After being transfered several more times and disconnected at least twice you might be lucky enough to reach the finally-someone-with-a-brain-department.

However, the very first person I spoke to at Office Depot quickly found my orders (even though I had used two different accounts to order them and couldn't remember the order numbers). Then, without any hassle, they offered to send someone out the next day to pick up the extra package. All told the mistake took a mere five minutes of my time to fix. I recently made an order at amazon.com. I don't have any specific story to tell about them, they just generally rock. Amazon is one of the last companies fighting for a tax-free internet. It was great to order cheap books, pay no tax or shipping charges, and have the books arrive at my door in just a few days. Woohoo!