New Tricks

They say that you can’t teach old dogs new tricks. That may hold true, I don’t 100% believe that, maybe focusing more on a higher incidence of exceptions. Maybe that statement was made with an alpha closer to 0.85 than 0.95 but regardless, this is what they say. Yesterday I learned that a middle aged dog has a great capacity for new tricks. For one of the few times in my life I found myself ordering flowers. It’s been a long time this had happened. I’m not sure I had a cell phone the last time I sent anyone flowers. I was asked by my parents to order the flowers for an older relative that is having some serious health concerns and has found herself in the hospital and in a rough spot. I was happy to do it. I didn’t fully understand why I would be doing the ordering on behalf of my parents though. The relative who is hospitalized is closer to my house but it was understood that I wouldn’t be physically delivering the flowers, only arranging that. I asked them why they wouldn’t order them and I was met with silence and frustration. They said I’d have the more local phone book and could find something appropriate. Then they told me an anecdote about another relative that tried to order flowers and it ended up being an American company and the didn’t say that and ended up keeping the money and never delivering any flowers. So I suppose that one solitary incident flavoured their perception, a perception that was already confusing with their comments about using a phone book. I explained that phone books disappeared about 7 years ago with the rise of Google. It is the universal phone book now. A dynamic phone book with ratings and reviews to alert you to fraud and to tell you were the company is located. You can also access most companies websites to learn what they are about. In my case, I could have ordered online entirely. I opted to do my order over the phone to ensure the details were correct and to ask some questions that I knew I would be asked during the follow-up report to my parents. It took a couple of calls to get it done but it was disturbingly easy, and affordable. I was happy to help out my family but I guess I’m a little confused about why they has this aversion. I think between this cautionary tale they’d heard and some previous struggles around ordering online, and accidentally ordering multiple times when they only sought one item lead to this conclusion. I’ve heard that the flowers were delivered and greatly appreciated so no matter the journey, I guess for my parents the ends justified the means.