Was it Media Mail? I shipped a box of books from Maine to North Carolina using that method; it went to New Hampshire, then Massachusetts, then suddenly popped up in Florida, followed by Indiana. It has finally arrived in Raleigh; delivery is supposed to happen tomorrow. But it was cheap!
I’m mildly concerned that it went through Florida; I’m pretty sure at least one of the books is banned there. 
No, not Media Mail (it’s the cat’s new tracking tag).
My understanding is that it’s often cheaper to send on various available flights rather than wait for direct flights.
Well fuck. The package arrived today missing all of the hard cover books. And of course I didn’t get insurance. 
I got some nice used clothes from a clothing swap last week. But some of them are so steeped in scented fabric softener that after 3 wash cycles, they still reek. That crap should be what RFKjr is all up in arms about, not vaccines.
Ooof, sounds like Gain. Someone at work saw fit to put some Gain-scented air freshener in the restroom…I can’t imagine wearing that stuff all day, or having to smell it in your closet.
I once stayed in an Airbnb that had so much scented fabric softener on the blankets and bedspreads that just touching them or sitting on them left the smell on me and my clothes. I can’t even guess how much of that stuff the cleaners must have used.
Stayed at a hotel in the UK this summer that was nice and recently renovated (to the limits a very old building could handle) and the newish owners were upgrading the office and the place was spotless…it was fine…except for the 25782270 different automatic air freshener sprayers (not all the same scent) and the floor cleaner solution (because this place was clean) all intermingling to the point where my apparently sensory issues on scent rose up and it felt violent and I had a mild panic attack.
We put the sprayers out in the hall (and the hotel staff did not attempt to replace them in our room) and opened the window but it took me a full day before I felt like I wasn’t being attacked by the scent.
Objectively, the place was great ..but olfactory…Ugh I’m tense just remembering it.
Also, when I was pregnant, the sickly sweet orangy scented air freshener in the bathroom at work made me vomit more than once. At least the toilet was right there….!
Oh, does anyone’s workplace use those giant plastic clip-on air fresheners in the restrooms? (Ours are serviced by Cintas; their name is embossed on the air fresheners.) They change the fragrances often, and the ones they’re using right now are aggressively tropical.
It’s like spending vacation at the perfume counter of a department store.
I’ve never been a fan of scented anything. There’s an odd story about Mercedes Benz of all companies developing a line of scents that were supposed to restore a “new car smell” to their vehicles. I don’t remember all the reasons it failed, but it was definitely a huge flop. and it amounted to the fact that (a) no one wanted them, and (b) some people are strongly allergic to artificial scents, which are basically pollution.
The least offensive one I’ve ever found is Glade “Clean Linen” plug-in air freshener, which wicks scented oil into the air using a small amount of heat. In small doses it really does smell like fresh laundry, and I used it for a while after an unwelcome bird’s nest was cleaned out of my dryer exhaust ducting. You wouldn’t think that the nest of pretty songbirds would stink, but I assure you that it does.
I don’t remember what the defect was that allowed mama bird to get in and set up a nursery, but the guys who cleared it out (fortunately the babies were all gone by then and mama herself was out somewhere) put up a wire mesh to prevent future bird nesting.
I went to the supermarket yesterday. As the official supermarket of the local NFL team, they have a long running (multiple years) deal - wear your team apparel on game day & get 5% off your order. Of course I forgot about this until I was in the store. Usually, I can just say, “My hat’s in the car” & they’ll give it to you. Nope, not yesterday, she wouldn’t give it to me.
This is a gimme & she wouldn’t. I did take the receipt home & if I get back there I’ll take it in & go to the service counter & show them I wasn’t credited for it & get my whopping $4…or just not bother for that retirement-changing amount.
That sounds nice! (Clean Linen, not the bird’s nest) I wonder if they have it in wax melts. I don’t use air fresheners, but I do have a little wax warmer thingy. A friend gave it to me, with some wax melts that smell like food (french toast, maybe?). They do smell good, but they make me hungry. Which reminds me, it’s time for lunch!
So you are angry they didn’t give you something you weren’t entitled to? You didn’t wear the team gear so you shouldn’t get the discount.
Management is cracking down on random freebies to people who didn’t do the bare minimum?
Agreed. Complaining because for once you didn’t get away with cheating is kind of messed up.
Gain makes my eyeballs bleed.
I like that one. I took Spike to the Walmart by his school Saturday (I was visiting for Family Weekend - we ended up spending six hours at the local game lounge, playing Arkham Horror.) to pick one of those up. He had come back to his dorm room after a shower and realized his room smelt of “teenaged boys.”
When I had my home automation business, I routinely took credit cards for purchases that were between 25K and 50K, and those were some killer merchant fees. I didn’t pass them onto the client directly, —- but these were regular, long term clients, I knew they were going to use the cards and I took that into consideration when I priced the contracts.
These clients (electrical contractors) used their credit cards for everything and racked up millions of points each year.
I set up the Japan office for a medium sized US manufacturer. As managers we had company cards and the company allowed us to use the points.
In Japan, our customers wouldn’t take cards but I still got plenty of points from business trips, and various things.
At some point the VP of HR changed things so all travel expenses went on her company card. That went on until the outrage grew too long and so then they went to the president’s card.
The guy was already rich from the profits of the company. Did he really need the points? Another example of corporate nonsense.
I do not. The interesting thing about the communications infrastructure in my current subdivision is that, for some reason that I can’t fathom, the local cable monopoly got the right (or opportunity) to wire up the place, but the Bell telephone monopoly did not. So you get great broadband internet service and TV cable if you want it (I don’t), but if you want a landline telephone, you go through the cable provider, using a telephone cable modem in the basement.
Fortuately, things changed a few years ago when Bell ran fiber through the neighbouhood, which is what your question reminded me of. They asked each household if they wanted fiber run from the street to the house – no cost, they just needed permission to bury fiber along your property. I said sure. So now I have a loop of fiber at the side of the house that I never did anything with, but it’s nice to have that as a competitive option if I get even more pissed off than usual at the cable provider. They’re still running copper, but can provide internet speeds up to 2 Gb/s.
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