Peapod doesn’t always have the items ordered in stock. In their defense, it’s uncommon in my experience, but it happens. They list these items at the top of every receipt so they’re easy to find.
From my last receipt:
“Out of Stock
The Bake Shop Muffins Blueberry Mini – 12 ct ($0.00)
The Bake Shop Muffins Chocolate Chip Mini – 12 ct
Substituted The Bake Shop Muffins Blueberry Mini – 12 ct”
While technically still accurate, it doesn’t instill me with a lot of confidence.
I’ve just reconciled my bank statement from December against my receipts, and found a mismatch from a meal at a chain restaurant.
I suspected at first that a dishonest server had raised the tip amount, hoping I’d never consult my statement. Not so. On closer inspection, I discovered they’d just eliminated the tip entirely, billing only the cost of the meal.
Sealing up my amusement was the realization that my tip was only 10% in the first place. I always tip well, so this suggests the service (which I do not remember at all, apparently) was so terrible it deserved special penalty. It’s appropriate that the server was then so incompetent as to incorrectly process the check, and thereby forfeit the entire amount.
On the one hand, I wrote down the wrong address for the Music Box Theatre, where Aaron Sorkin’s play (“The Farnsworth Invention“) is running on Broadway. I feel appropriately silly for hailing a cab to go three blocks, only to end up two minutes late anyway.
Now I have to go again, just to see the beginning of the play.
However, I redeemed myself by appearing so familiar with my surroundings in New York throughout the day that no fewer than four people separately stopped me to ask for directions. I answered all four correctly.
1. “Where’s the zoo?” – from just north of the zoo in Central Park.
2. “Where’s Broadway?” – standing in the middle of Times Square. Dude, even if you’re from West Nowhereville, Montana, it’s Times Square. You can find Broadway with a blindfold. You’re on it.
3. “Where’s the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts?” – I should get major points for this one, even if I couldn’t name the exact subway line that stops there
4. “I know we’re at 42nd and Eighth, but where does the bus to the airport stop?” – again, I should get some huge points for pinpointing the exact part of the intersection where the bus stops. That’s not something you get off a map.
Now we just have to stop to reflect on how many things are wrong in the universe when I can pass for a New York City directions-giver. I think it’s the white cashmere scarf and the briefcase that really did the trick.
Since I began working here, I’ve received occasional voice mail messages from someone, all saying essentially, “This is Frank. I got paged here. Call me back.”
Now, I have absolutely no idea who Frank is, and I have never paged anybody in my entire life.
If I ever spoke to Frank myself I could assure him that I will never page him for any reason, so he can safely ignore “me” from now on. However, these pages only ever seem to reach him when I’m out of my office. Sometimes it’s lunch, sometimes a meeting, sometimes I’m just in another office, but it’s always, always, a voice mail.
So the question is: how many times does this have to happen before I begin to suspect someone’s been playing a very poorly executed prank on Frank and me for a couple years?
Overheard: “This is diarrhea, vomiting, upset stomach, (garbled) extremely contagious (garbled).”
Since I moved to Massachusetts partway through 2006, I filed my 2006 taxes using form 1-NR/PY – the form for part-year residents. This is perfectly logical, if rather more inconvenient than taxes usually are.
I just got my tax forms in the mail for 2007. The federal government sent me a copy of Ye Olde 1040, since that’s what I filed last year. And the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts sent me 1-NR/PY… ’cause that’s what I filed last year.
That’s right: because I only lived in Massachusetts for part of 2006, the state has concluded I’ll live here for only part of 2007 too.
Sure there are people who did leave the state a year after moving, but that’s surely not the norm. And it’s true that 1-NR/PY is for non-residents as well, but as they’ve mailed the form to me at my home address (in… wait for it… Massachusetts) it’s unlikely I’m in that demographic.
So Massachusetts? When in doubt, just send a Form 1.
From craigslist: “Looking for an indvidual (sic) edit DVD and make the (sic) G rated. My kids are small and thier (sic) are alot (sic) of great movies out but do not want them to view the violence or inappropiate (sic) material”
(Yeah, it’s an overuse of “sic,” but you can’t say it’s undeserved.)
In Episode 110: Mapping of This American Life there’s an act that leads with a discussion of the background noise we hear all the time from appliances at home and in the office – noise that, like all sound, has a particular pitch.
“For some reason I had been thinking about why it is that we seem, almost universally, to assume that a minor chord is sad and a major chord is happy. If a minor third is just somehow inherently sad, then if I were sitting in an office having a minor third played at me all day long, then it’s indeed possible that I could be made sad by just sitting in my office.”
Guy on Cell Phone: “… My friend and I just went to a naked club. … Yeah!” (the train lurches and he drops the phone) “Aaaa. Hang on, mom.”
– Overheard on the T
For unimportant reasons, I opened up Google Maps to a satellite image of O’Hare International Airport, and I couldn’t help but notice a mysterious tunnel in the middle of the tarmac.
At first glance this looks easily big enough to admit a large commercial airliner. What the heck is it, though? The Google doesn’t seem to have an easy answer for me.