Back in my teaching days, I was presented a note from admin that said we should order supplies now because it was a ‘use it or lose it’ appropriation from the legislature. So—I ordered something like a dozen boxes of chalk, because, well, teachers use it. Unfortunately our order list didn’t mean ‘boxes’ like people would use. What I had delivered to my classroom was a pickup-sized chunk of the white cliffs of Dover.
I took a lot of ribbing for that. People would drop by to borrow a box of chalk…
Well, I got tired of hunting down our kitties’ favorite chow, which is Whiskas Purrfectly Fish/Chicken. Store’s always out of it. Or I get one box. So…I have Amazon Prime, which means free shipping on almost everything.
I ordered four boxes of chicken and 6 or 8 of fish.
It came.
It’s the chalk. When they mean boxes, they mean boxes each containing half a dozen boxes…
We are well-supplied in catfood for a while.
If the price tag didn’t ring any alarm bells, then you must have gotten a really good deal.
We had a similar story: Someone in my wife’s family got us ten boxes of wine glasses as a wedding gift. Dozen glasses per box. (We returned all but one box and bought stuff we needed.) I was suggesting we send them a thank-you note photocopied 120 times, but my wife didn’t find the idea as funny as I did.
This is where reading the fine print is a pre-requisite. 🙂
I just got the strangest looks from the people waiting on our meeting to start…..of course, they didn’t read your post…..
CJ, do you do a comparison on the various brands/varieties out there? I was feeding my girls Purina ONE for a while, then switched to Blue Buffalo (but that’s ‘spensive!!!!) Since none of the cats are older than 5 years, I’m not concerned with the “senior” formulas. According to the ingredients, the Blue Buffalo has 32% protein, I wonder if that’s enough..they seem to like it, but they don’t go through it like they did the Purina ONE. A 15 pound bag of Blue Buffalo would last nearly a month with 4 cats, now it lasts just over a month with 3 cats.
Ha, I should do that. I ordered cat litter from Amazon and was mostly pleased, except that the cardboard box was falling apart when it was delivered (litter was in a plastic bag though, so all was ok). It’s hard to drag this stuff home without a car.
I got them considerably cheaper than at the store, where they would cost 144.00. I paid 121.00, free shipping. That’s 6 four-packs of packages of 10 meals each. Or 6x4x6.49. As I would have figured, if I hadn’t gone at it in a hurry…one packet serves 2 cats lunch, one for supper, and night-time snack/breakfast is a lady’s fistful each of Blue Buffalo kibble.
at work, our folks found a great deal on printer paper — basically half price. they ordered and kinda bragged a little about their shopping prowess. when the boxes arrived, they were half-sized (half a xerox box, actually kinda cute). the jokes went on for a long time.
Last month, I narrowly missed pressing Submit Order before noticing I’d made a typo that would have produced both a rather large box on my doorstep, sufficient to supply a small army, and a concurrent precipitous drop in my account. I was quite relieved I caught it in time.
Then again, some months back, I (somehow, still not sure how) ordered, among other things, what I’d intended to be two tomato pincushions. When the order arrived, there were about seven. They were cheap, so it wasn’t a great incident, but I was rather…impressed…with the unexpected wealth of pincushions. Extra tomato sauce: I really don’t sew, can’t see well enough; but one occasionally needs to put pins somewhere, or other uses for a pincushion.
I remember on my second ship, one of my shipmates was telling me that the Supply Officer had sent out a message for supply requests. These are usually very long letter-number combinations called “MILSTRIP”, and you go buggy trying to type them if the font was too close together (transpose from typewritten page to teletype tape/print). Well, I don’t know if the Supply Officer made the mistake, or the radioman who typed up the message, but one day, a truck pulled up to the pier alongside the ship and they unloaded one engine for an F-14 Tomcat. While it would have been nice to use it on the ship, we really had no place to put it…….LOL.
I can remember processing orders during large wildland fires and you had to be pretty careful when ordering supplies. Some things were listed in a special catalog as single items and some things were x number of items in a small box which came packed with a bunch of boxes in a bigger box. Batteries were notorious — you need 8 AA batteries to run one handheld radio (there’s oodles of radios) and they go thru them like crazy. They come 24 to a box but an order for one doesn’t get you one little box, it’ll get you a bunch of boxes. Folk calling in an order got a lot of close questions about just how much they really needed. Now they get doled out by the radio guys at camp–ziplock baggies with 8 batteries you go pick up when you need some. Apparently the universe decided your nice cleaned and organized basement storage was a vacuum that needed filling.
On the other hand, for one of the tests I ran I ordered two boxes of printer paper so that I could print out the data collection forms and one-hundred of 18 page survey forms, plus three copies of the completed test report and various and sundry draft portions. When I arrived at the test site and got to unload the truck with supplies, our Supply Officer had sent two reams of paper. It took a 150-mile round trip in to a Staples store and a lot of explaining why I had the charges for two boxes of paper on my expenses. The Supply Officer HAD given me two replacement toner drums for the laser printer. I wonder what he was thinking… From there on out my office kept a supply of office supplies in our “mobile test” boxes that contained pens, pencils, manila folders, staplers and staples, rulers, scissors, a paper chopper, tape, power strips/cords, white boards and white board markers, hanging hardware, blank CDs/DVDs and two spare boxes of paper. We always brought back unused supplies, so that we had what we needed without having to requisition more than we had used at the previous test. We did this four to eight times a year. It did get around to the test teams that if you ever needed office supplies check with the data collection cell first before you went and bought something for test.
Ah, the difference between a ‘box’ and a ‘case’, where a case is a big box with smaller boxes inside.
(Our box-o’-blox when I was a kid was a case-size box for 10-oz boxes of corn flakes. Learn it young….)
On one particularly memorable occasion, hubby sent an order to the office for a case of 12 light-bulbs (high wattage halogen deck lights for a fishing boat, you can see them literally for MILES) and one light fixture.
Bonehead in the office ordered… yes, you can guess it… one light-bulb and a case of fixtures. Apparently the light fixtures were less expensive than the light bulbs and bonehead assumed hubby had transposed. It wasn’t long after that that I got drafted to do food orders, although I believe the actual tipping point was the case/box of mac-n-cheese issue. Something about a dozen cases of Mac-n-cheese- and those cases hold like 20 boxes!
The guys ate a lot of mac-n-cheese one season, and I have BRIGHT-LIGHT-SHINING-IN-MY-FACE whenever I need a work light in the garage. And another on each side of the house when I need to go hunting for a needle in the yard at night or something. At least until the bulb burns out, then I’ll just downsize the fixture and bulb for less than the price of that bulb.
Lol!
I can at least say we have a prospect of very happy kittehs for quite a while! They go through about a box every 5 days, and that’ll be quite a few weeks with no substitutes.
Are you sure Sei and Shu didn’t, ah, assist somehow? LOL. I feel sure that if my guys could, they would. Every once in a while, they do something that makes me wonder just how much they know. Then there are the fluff-brained mishaps….
When you heard a dining room smash
Or up from the pantry there came a loud crash
Or down from the library came a loud ping
From a vase which was commonly said to be Ming
Then the family would say: “Now which was which cat?
It was Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer
And there’s nothing at all to be done about that!”
Pyanfar’s Mailbag — Or, things that might raise a hani ear or two.
In the mail the other day, I received a most curious large format postcard, full-color.
“Waxing For All – European Wax Center.” Only in the big city, folks. There’s a photo of a fun-loving lass with bare midriff and leather jacket, quite tame as such things go. Though the hair blowing in front of her face detracts from the image, I think. On the back is body text in a light color in about 12pt type on a white background, thus guaranteeing only the young, motivated, sharp-sighted will read it.
One can only imagine what hani would make of such. Or how na Tully would have a time trying to get around the explanation. Heh.
One also suspects it would be fairly mild compared to certain sectors dockside, most human stations. Probably good for a chuckle or two amid crew on leave, an oddity for the juniors to wonder about.
Anyway, it gave me a good laugh. I think I’m keeping it for humor value.
Uh, no, lads and lasses, sorry, I don’t plan to visit their fine establishment. I’ve dealt with hot wax for pasteup, galleys and layouts. Really, really don’t want that near certain more personally sensitive parts.
One hopes the winsome lass enjoys her beach outing, or bike ride, dance club crawl, or whatever she’s planning.
Looks could fool ya. She might be a hot pilot on leave. Who knows?
Waxing For All … gotta be the oddest thing to hit my desk in months. … Hope it gives you all a grin or two.
Lends a whole new meaning to the old threat “I’ll snatch you bald!!”
The thought of hot wax near tender portions of my anatomy makes me cringe. (It might be good for getting out cactus stickers and the micro-thorns from roses.)
We use scotch tape for that, as well as for insect stings.
Indeed! One hesitates to speak of waxing eloquent in such situations….
Groan…..
All the cats I have had over the last 30 years have liked Whiskas but prefer Felix, which is made by Purina. I think it might be because it is meatier, and it certainly smells more appetizing, even to a human nose. It probably hasn’t made it to the US.
I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard over one of CJ’s threads!
Thinking about the Soda Stream dispenser you have previously lauded, you may have heard that Scarlett Johannson’s ad for that company didn’t make the cut for being shown at the Super Bowl? Well things just got more interesting:
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/scarlett-johansson-parts-ways-oxfam-over-ad-israeli-company
Apparently the Soda Stream ad was dropped by Fox not because of the controversy over Scarlett Johansson, Oxfam and settlements in the West Bank, but because the ad says, “Sorry, Coke and Pepsi!”
I guess Coke and Pepsi are big advertisers on Fox.
The ad is here