Disappearing Shoes And My Patience That Ran Away With Them

A month long, repeatedly botched, retail order triggered my impatience and brought out “The Beast”

“Sorry, we don’t have the shoes you picked in your size but we can ship them to your home. Delivery will take a couple extra days since you live on an island.”

I’m standing at the check out counter in the athletic gear store I’ve been frequenting for more than 25 years.

“Let’s go with that option.” I nod in agreement. “I need to check the address you have on file though. I don’t think it’s been updated.”

We go through the process of editing and putting in a new address when my intuition starts dinging. I know better than to ignore it.

“Can you read me what you’ve typed?”

He rattles off my address. It sounds right and I wonder why I’m still dinging. There are impatient people in line behind me however and I’m not one to hassle a worker in the service world.

I return home and wait patiently the first week. Coming any day now, I tell myself as I lace up running shoes damaged while gardening. A sharp stick poked a hole in the upper mesh 2 months ago and my sock is now the only thing keeping my pinkie toe in place.

Ten days pass and a sense of foreboding seeps in, prompting a call to the store. After the usual nauseating robot menu, an actual human picked up and I politely explained my situation.

The sales clerk checked the computer then put me on hold for an ungodly length of time, muzak on speaker polluting the atmosphere.

I brushed my teeth, cleaned breakfast dishes and was about to hang up when the clerk returned from Neverland. UPS couldn’t deliver the package since it had the wrong address, he informs me.

My house number was 41 and the store sales person had typed in 401, a literal translation of speech. This gave me pause. Who would do that? Forty one is 41, not four hundred one. It was not a typo. We had gone over it twice. It was a misperception of numbers.

The clerk hastily apologized and said he would have the order resent and expedited as well. I would receive the shoes in three to four days max. Ding, ding, ding, chiming in once again.

Another week passed. No shoes. My pinkie toe bulged out further as the mesh continued giving way. I made another dreaded call. This time directly to the company instead of the store.

Robo agony once again as I stabbed my fork in a piece of watermelon while enduring the obnoxious list of options. A rep picked up and again placed me on hold to investigate the saga I had painfully repeated.

I paid a few bills online and threw in a load of wash. By the time she rose from the dead, I’d also made the bed.

“I apologize it took awhile to trace your order. There was an address mistake but I intercepted the package and asked UPS to gum a new label on top of the old one. You should get it in two days.”

No shoes as another week flew by.

I did some deep breathing then called the company a third time. A familiar disaster zone ensued. A new rep pledged to mail an express delivery and another eight days moved into the great beyond, sans any sign of shoes.

I lectured myself to use this frigging growth opportunity to elevate my lowest bar. I made a fourth and final call to the company. This time asking for a manager.

Steam had been building up from a perky little inner volcano. I wanted to zap someone in authority to relieve my ever increasing surges of lava.

The rep assured me she could help and she would carefully go over the order to make sure there were no mistakes. I stated my address slowly and even spelled it out as she typed it in. I asked her to repeat it back and here’s where I lost my thinning veneer of civility.

She typed in the correct house number and street, but she placed the city where the store was located on the last line instead of the island.

“WTH! Why did you type that when I just spelled out the island’s name?” I was speaking too loudly. In fact, I was yelling….softly.

“I get disoriented when people are stressed and I start messing up,” she began explaining. “Please don’t raise your voice. We will get through this a lot faster if you don’t.”

She sounded close to tears and I felt chagrined for dumping on her. I rose up from the sordid pit of what I considered justifiable anger. A phoenix appeared in my mind’s eye, bearing an olive branch of compassion for self and others.

“I’m sorry I talked to you like that. It’s close to a month I’ve been dealing with this order and my fourth call, so yes, I’m pissed off. But it’s not okay to take that out on you.”

The dam broke and we began apologizing profusely to each other. One kind word after another. Both of us revealing vulnerabilities in the sharing.

“I bet you have to deal with angry people every day,” I surmise as we discuss her job.

“Most customers call with an irritating issue. They want to rant and it ends up being with me. I understand their frustration but I end up feeling overwhelmed and toxic by the end of the day. I’d be upset too though if I was in your shoes, or not, in your case.”

This raised a chuckle between us and lightened our load. I thanked her for our session in kindness conversion and she says she’s glad she picked up the call.

My shoes arrived via UPS Express three days later. But here’s the clincher and the glitter in the gold. I had been hoofing around for a week in my new shoes when I returned home one morning to find a package on the kitchen counter.

Hubby explained our land partner had brought it over. He found it tucked away in his battery shed, a place he rarely entered. It was postmarked three weeks ago.

I looked at the label. There it was, 401 in all her shining, non existing glory. The driver went right past our road, with the numbers 41 on a well marked post. He ascended the hill as far as possible and dropped the package in the most bizarre place imaginable with no address in sight.

I lined my running shoes up in a row. Old, pinkie burster. New, slightly broken in pair. And a brand new, still boxed gift from the country of confusion.

Was the boxed pair a nod of grace from unseen forces? Perhaps they were a thumbs up for ceasing my tirade when the wick was lit. Or maybe it’s a softening for the next little scurry through turf I’d prefer not to trek.

Unless you are an emotional master and there’s precious few of those, it’s challenging to wade through daily disturbances to our peace. We take on the “Fed Up” energy in the collective field and can only handle so much before it ricochets out and affects others.

I’m grateful I went through this experience now that it’s over. I needed a reminder to cultivate deeper patience and hopefully extend it to anyone struggling with theirs. Remembering we all process life at different speeds.

For now, I’ve decided to follow Snail Girl. Her trail is easy to see. It glistens in the sun.

I don’t expect Express Deliveries on this route. Our average speed is 0.03 mph. It could take weeks to reach the end of the block.

You can join us if you have the patience.

SLIME is the path we track.

SLOW DOWN

LET GO

INTEGRATE

MOVE FORWARD

EXPLORE YOUR HEART

That’ll do for now. 🌞🐌