|
The operation as a whole went something like this: Customers would go online or call in orders
for flower arrangements they saw online but were too scared to actually order over the computer.
They would pick what they wanted along with any extras (i.e. teddy bears, balloons that say, "I
love you," or something), and then they would be taken to a billing information window and the
rest would be left to us. Unbeknownst to them, we took the order newly posted on our database
and cross-referenced it with another database that had the addresses and phone numbers of all
the florists in their area. So while customers thought themselves sick and tired of shoddy
local service and moving onto bigger and better with the '01s, they were actually paying us
to call their old friends back in town and do the ordering and delivery arrangements for them.
Besides stuffed animals and Mylar balloons, JustFlowers also provided customers with card space
to turn their intimate feelings of hard driven and at-last-found love into words. Here is where
I feel most customers, in more accurate high school sports vernacular, "shit the bed." Instead
of using the grater to shave off wedges of cheese, these people were forcing the whole damn block
through the face of the thing. Skipping the highly conventional, but still very popular
"Happy Valentine's Day," they strained out passages like "The way the moon reflects off your
eyes is not unlike the moon on a moonlit lake," "Your love is the wind beneath my wings," "The
breath of life is nothing compared to the blush of your lips," "The sun cannot hold a light to
your beauty," and "God creates all things perfect and you are one of those things." Some were
written in Spanish. Some were spelled out in Farsi. One husband went so far as to spell out
his first, middle, and last name under the word "Sincerely." They were all nauseating, sickly
sweet like drinking Aunt Jemimah's syrup straight out of the bottle, and very, very entertaining.
|
|
