Flower Sending Hall of Shame

Some days the only thing keeping me at my job (you know other than the big, big bucks) is the glimpse into people's minds the job allows me.

One day I had a guy come in and when I said, "How can we help you today?" He said, "My fiancee is about to kick me to the curb and I really need your help. You know what chicks like, right?"

I said, "Well, for starters, most of us don't like being called 'chicks.'" Then I sold him a dozen roses, which would never have worked on me, and must not have worked entirely on the fiancee because they broke up shortly after that. However, they did reconcile six or eight months later and were recently married, so maybe they were time delayed roses or something.

More recently, we had a kid call from out of town to send his girlfriend a dozen roses with the message, "Me and my hangover miss you." Other than the obvious grammatical issues*, I was amused by his willingness to admit he got drunk without her. Maybe he tried to pass it off as missing her so much he needed the escape. But if he missed her that much and he was drunk in a bar so far from home, what other "escape" might he have indulged in?

My favorite of all time though, was the guy who came in the morning after he "did something stupid." He asked for help writing the card. Cranky Boss Lady (who's not above prying) asked, "Did this something stupid involve another woman?" It did, so Cranky Boss Lady, in her infinite wisdom, came up with "I'm sorry. She means nothing to me. I love you and only you." When I came back and found the order on my desk, where it was waiting for me to write out the card, I was appalled.

First of all, he didn't write the card himself, while he was there? When the card arrived in someone else's handwriting, my first thought if I were the wife would not be a forgiving one--he obviously messed around at least a little and then he compounds the error by letting the staff of the flower shop in on his "mistake."

Secondly, the line "she means nothing to me" is actually not at all reassuring. She means nothing to you and yet you're willing to risk your marriage to do whatever it is you did with her? What the hell does that say about what your marriage means to you?

Third--and this is not card-related so much as flower-related--I'm thoroughly over flowers as an apology. You have no idea how much of that we see. There's actually an enclosure card with a guy in a dog house on the corner of it and plenty of room for an apology. I mean, I know everyone makes mistakes, but how did men get it into their heads that flowers will make everything okay? And in the case of doing something stupid that involved another woman, I personally would find flowers insulting--I couldn't help feeling that the flowers were an attempt to minimize and even trivialize the mistake.

But what do I know? I'm just the cynical chick behind the counter who overthinks everything.

*I've created a monster or two in the grammar police department. When I was telling the boys this story (as a cautionary tale, mostly), Son-Two goes, "Wow! Wow! What horrible grammar!" assuming that was the point of my story.