Note: You might want to read part 1, part 2 and part 3 first.
Okay, are you ready for this?
So, lots of time went by and I had kind of forgotten about the whole monitor situation. Then one evening we came home and there was a sticker on the door from FedEx saying that they had a package to deliver that required a signature. I asked Lloyd what it was and he said it was the monitor.
Hooray!
The problem was that we weren’t getting home until after 6, so no one could sign for it. We left a note for the FedEx guy asking if he could deliver it to my work.
The next day – he did!
Hooray!
He brought it to the CDC at noon; I signed for it; he put the big box in the entryway and I went back to the classroom. At naptime I went to go open it up. As I carried it into the kitchen I thought it was a little light, but thought that maybe John Harlan and Lloyd had worked something out and he was only returning some of the parts.
I opened it up and saw this:
It was one of those ‘time stood still’ kind of things because my director was right there and I had been explaining the whole ‘broken-monitor-sold-then-claimed-to-be-cracked-then-returned’ thing and as I’m digging through layers of packing materials – mostly packing materials that we had used to wrap the monitor – I’m realizing that there are NO monitor parts in here.
What?
Then I found this at the bottom of the box:
Yes, people. That is a jug full of water that John Harlan put in the box to give it some weight.
I will pause for a moment to honor first, your sympathetic shock, then, your sympathetic seething.
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Yes, John Harlan (johnslcdrepair, johnhis11_computers, xhd3000repairman43560 and computerguru43560 on eBay) mailed back a box full of packing material and water and I signed for it!! I was aghast, and then I was livid. I held up the jug to show my director and I believe I called John Harlan some bad, bad names.
I couldn’t believe it! People really do this?!? I walked around quietly venting to everyone about the situation (quietly, because it was naptime) and then called Lloyd. When I told him about the water, he said, “Did you open the box in front of the FedEx guy?” Well, of course, I didn’t! How was I supposed to know that treachery was afoot? Up until now I had been leading a blissful, non-villain-tainted life! Of course, as soon I signed for the package, PayPal knew that John had “returned the monitor”, so they closed the claim and he got his money back.
I kept venting and Lloyd said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
It wasn’t about the loss of money for me at all, it was about JUSTICE and – ok – REVENGE. I wanted to fly to Ohio and ring this guy’s neck doorbell and say, “Hello? Did your mother raise you to be a jerk? If so, she did a bang-up job.” I thought about many awful things to do to get even, but here’s the thing – I’m not a bad person like John Harlan of Sylvania, Ohio, so I only think them, I will not actually do them.
Instead, I’ll… tell you the end of the story tomorrow.