So. I'll try to avoid my usual 'make a short story long' tendency and explain a situation briefly. (Emphasis on try; apologies in advance if I fail).
Our PTA led a fundraiser before Christmas. One student did not receive his orders, even though our trusted (I am not being facetious; she is truly trustworthy) volunteer who distributed the goods to each classroom knows she delivered his to the teacher. But it is our PTA responsibility to make sure customers are taken care of so we, after being alerted to this situation the day before winter break began (2 weeks after the sale was over), scrambled to first scour every classroom for the missing orders [yours truly took on this task because my school had already let out for the holidays, and I had previously been slacking in my presidential duties] and then call the company for replacements.
The company is in eastern Oregon, not too far from us and extremely generous & quick to help. They were able to send the necessary items directly to each customer who ordered from the student at our school. Yay, us!
Fast forward to a few weeks ago - the fundraising company e-mailed to let us know the student's teacher found the order and what did we want to do with it? Our options were to send it back to the company [we pay back our profit + the shipping], let the student keep it [PTA eats all the costs], or have the student return it to PTA and we sell the products to whomever wants them.
We thought the last option seemed the easiest so we got in touch with the parent. Because I didn't want to end up with the teacher "losing" the order in her classroom again, I asked the parent to hold onto it until I could arrange for a PTA volunteer to pick it up the day her child brought it to school. My conversation with her took place during The Plague Season, so I didn't get around to scheduling someone to make the pick up until this week. When I called the parent to say we were a go for tomorrow, she announced that she QUOTE "drove around with the orders in her car for a week and then just gave them to the people who had ordered them before." Luckily we weren't face to face because I'm pretty sure my expression said something along the lines of Are you fucking stupid? That was $65 of PTA money; not a fortune, granted, but it's our kids' money.
I am taking responsibility for dragging out this business the last couple of weeks but seriously? How fricking cumbersome could the orders have possibly been? They had been LOST in a classroom for two months! The child was able to carry them home from school, presumably without use of a crane and without developing a hernia. What didn't the parent understand when I said PTA OWNS THE PRODUCTS SO WE'LL JUST GET THEM BACK FROM YOU. How does that translate into "It's inconvenient for me to have this stuff anymore so I'll just give it away" ?
Maybe I'm just extra grouchy because I have to read still more short stories about smoking weed and/or selling it plus enter grades before 9 am. Grrr.
Thanks for listening. Here is your reward, in case you missed it before at my A-Lister blog. Or even if you didn't, it's spectacularly hilarious. I feel better already!
