OK, I realize this is a very lame rant, but I want to vent.
Recently I bought a used book. It was rather a peculiar story but held my interest. Turns out there is a sequel that is kinda hard to find. So I looked on out-of-print sites and found three copies listed. Two were cheap, and they were in Germany. One was more expensive($15.00) and it was in the USA.
I emailed one German bookseller about the availability of their copy and got no reply. Rude not to reply, I think.
After three days I emailed the other German bookseller. Got a fast reply that yes, they do still have it. So I used the e-commerce “buy-it-now” function for that site, filled out their forms, and got an order confirmation. Today I get an email from the seller saying yes, he HAS shipped the book. But then he ranted on me because, although I hadn’t realized it, I had filled out the postage section of the order form incorrectly, and this resulted in me being charged only for incountry postage, not the international rate(higher) The seller goes on about how they must not teach geography in American schools, because Topeka is not a town in Germany, but out of the goodness of his heart he has sent the book on anyway. He then goes into detail on how much he lost on the transaction(it’s about $1.50 US dollars)
So I have fired back yet another email to him, offering to send on the difference, so he won’t be out of pocket. But I did it in a sarcastic mode that matched his own.
Was I out of line? I didn’t mean to make the mistake on the form, and it hurt my fellings(poor me!) that he was rude. But then I was sarcastic to him too when maybe I shouldn’t have been. But I was, initially, just so *&%#@ mad!
Take the high road. Quick, dispatch an apology. Don’t be the kind of American he thinks you are. He probably has his own regrets as well. This isn’t me talking, it’s Dale Carnegie.
I don’t think it was wrong of you–what goes around comes around. He was rude to you first and you really owe him nothing (other than $1.50).
Damn Europeans!* They’re so jim-jammed together over there that international dealings are no big deal for most of them. Harder for us to remember stuff like that when a letter can go a thousand miles or more and never leave the country. I wouldn’t sweat it, I doubt it’s keeping him up at night.
So, are you going to keep us all in suspense, or tell us what the book was?
bella–*who actually loves Europeans, when she can find them
belladonna, the original book was titled The Psalms of Herod . The author is Esther Friesner and the book was published by White Wolf publishing, a Canadian company. The sequel is titledThe Sword of Mary . Sort of a dark fantasy, set in the future after some sort of ecological disaster. Human women now come into season, called their “times”, in the same way other mammals do. And human society has evolved(in ugly ways) to fit this pattern or reproduction.
I will probably apologize tomorrow. It’s too late in the evening over there for it to matter until then.
Having had to deal extensively with Swiss and Germans at my previous employer (always in English as I speak no German), I realized, after getting upset a few times like you, that their tone was due more to lacking the nuance in the language (both spoken and written). If that was the case here, don’t worry about your reply, as sarcasm is usually lost in translation.
Well, I returned from work today, got on the computer, gritted my teeth and got ready to apologize to the one bookseller. I found another email from him waiting, telling me he had been rude on purpose(it wasn’t in the translation), because he has more problems with selling to Americans than anyone else. He also turned down my offer to send him the extra postage, and told me, and “all the other Americans” to be more careful in the future when we fill out the forms.
So I didn’t apologize. I should have bought the book from an American, even though it would have cost twice as much.