Who knew things at Valentine's could be so hectic on all ends.
As most of you know, I worked in wholesale in Charlotte, NC with my husband a few years back. He has been in the flower business for just over 10 years. Being from Ecuador he knows his stuff and is confident in Ecuadorian product.
I have always hated Valentine's day! Well not always. When I was a kid we would wake up every Valentine's day and my Dad would have chocolates (the one's in the red hearts) and a card waiting for each of us on the dining room table! I always loved this, my mom of course got a realllly big heart with chocolate.
When I was 17 I was dating a real loser and my family made a decision for me to go live with my aunt and uncle eight hours away from home. I left on Valentine's Day, and cried the entire eight hour ride. From that day forward I hated Valentine's Day and every year something crappy happened!
The very next year I got pulled over for speeding, I had a vase of flowers in my car and I hit the accelerator because the vase flew in the floor board of the passenger seat and I was paying more attention to getting it up than my speed. (I was 18). By the way the flowers weren't for me, they were for a friend from a forbidden boyfriend and she couldn't take them home for fear of her parents.
When I was 19 and a freshman in college I had bronchitis and sinusitis at the same time on Valentine's Day. And guess what? I was asked out on my first date. I was sick, but I really wanted to go on this date, so I said yes. You can only imagine how beautiful I looked with a running nose, a hacking cough and burning eyes. The nice boy came to pick he up and in one hand he had a precious moose from Abercrombie and Fitch and in the other a helmet. That's right we were going to the movies on a motorcycle. It was 34 degrees outside!!! My dumb self still wanted so badly to go on this real first date, so off we went to the movies. Low and behold about 25 minutes into the movie the durn thing burnt, seriously we saw on the screen as the movie real started burning! So, that date ended quickly, we had just enough time to thaw out from our freezing cold ride and then we had to get right back on the bike! And no, there was no good night kiss, he definitely didn't want what I had!
Year after year same story, bad Valentine's Days. And, then I met my husband. We dated for four months, got married. I happened to marry a man in flowers which meant Valentine's Day would be even worse. We worked our butts of on our first Valentine's Day. Went to dinner very late and couldn't even enjoy it because we were so worn out. No good night kiss after that date either...I think I was asleep before we even got home.
We moved to Ecuador the next fall and Paul found a job at a rose farm as soon as possible. Valentine's Day number two for us was wild. Here at the farms about a week or two before Valentine's Day everyone is in a tizzy. They work from six am until late in the night. The first night I cooked for the sales team and the owner and drove it out to them. Fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes, sweet tea...the whole Southern sha-bang! They probably thought it was a very weird meal, but they were thankful for something hot and filling! Then a few days later they asked me to come and help. We got there around seven am and started to work. We were getting the cellophane wrappers separated, printing tickets to go on the boxes, putting the stickers on the boxes, moving boxes and so much more. We finally left the farm at three am, took home the other sales people and got home at four in the morning. We were dead. We didn't even want to hear the word Valentine's Day, or see a single frickin flower when the day came!
The following year Paul did the same thing with a different farm and I was in the US with our new baby Zeke! The next year Paul was 2 hours from here at a different farm and stayed at the farm for two days came home, left again for another two days and then returned. We missed each other and well that is why we have Benji!
So, this year...I am working for a rose farm, selling to the US exclusively to florists. I am pulling my hair out. Thank God I am able to work from home, but still I am so stressed. I have been talking with clients from different parts of the US, and I have four clients that ordered for Valentine's Day! Yay me! I have been beside myself, so excited for my sales. I have one client in South Dakota, one in Northern Florida, and two in North Carolina! I went first thing Monday, as my roses were supposed to leave Monday night to make sure everything was perfect. I got there and the roses hadn't been packaged yet, but I got to see them being measured and cut and talked with our engineer about one of our varieties that sometimes has a defect. I asked her to please make sure that none of our roses had that defective petal and to have someone check them very well before packaging! I then went and spoke with everyone in sales, and with the woman who gets the orders to the engineer. When I left everything was great! I was so nervous though because of some problems with FedEx.
That's right we are sending our roses to these florists via FedEx. Due to all of the bad weather across the US there are tons of delays and not just commercial flights, but cargo flights as well. From what I have heard last week there was a 72 hour wait to get flowers out of Ecuador. Things clear up over the weekend and I was really hoping that the weather would hold off. But, NO it decided to snow some more! No one at FedEx here in Quito would talk to me on Tuesday or Wednesday to give me any information on what my shipments travel may look like. They only told me via email that something looked weird with our tickets on the boxes. Um hello, I need to know more and NO ONE would answer my calls. I know I can be pretty scary when I get angry, but I wasn't angry yet, just worried. I tried looking for my boxes on the FedEx website with the tracking numbers given to me by the farm with no luck. My dear husband even called FedEx for me to make sure that there wasn't a language problem and to scare them a little. I was prepared to go to Quito myself to the cargo area and find out the problem for myself, but I thought I would try one more time. Finally, last night at six thirty; after I had been spoken to like I was the one doing something wrong by my sales manager and had cried a few times because I couldn't do anything about the fact that FedEx wouldn't answer a phone, an email or return my calls after many "nice" messages; I spoke with someone at the Quito office. No, not my personal representative, but a very helpful man. Come to find out my sales office printed the tickets incorrectly and they had to redo all of the tickets there at FedEx. Um, hello, all they had to do was call me and tell me that. The man gave me all new tracking numbers, but told me that they would be of no help because there was no information as far as destination or estimated time attached to them because they all had to be entered manually and no one had done that. WHAT??? WHY??? So, I had to quit for the night and pray that God would take my packages where they needed to go.
This morning, I finally got up with my sales representative. She was still hesitant to give me any information and transfered my case to someone in customer service! I am appalled! I spent the whole morning on the phone with FedEx customer service in both English and Spanish trying to get things straight with no luck. I finally emailed every contact I had at FedEx and finally got a reply from someone I had never even heard of giving me the locations of my roses!!!!!!! My roses are supposed to be at their locations by 10:30 am this morning. I got this email at 10:18. It seems the only roses that will be arriving on time will be the ones going to Florida, hm big shock and she won't be getting but three of her four boxes. The others seem to be a day behind, but they can't give me a straight answer on that either.
I am about to implode with anger, but have kept my cool! Now, I am preparing my speech for the general manager of FedEx at the Quito office. We will be having a meeting and if I have to do it in Spanish then so be it! For the moment, I will be waiting patiently for my clients to call me and let me know when their roses come in. And, pray that the sky doesn't fall out tonight so that the vans can get to them. Also, praying that the roses don't freeze!!!
I hate Valentine's Day, seriously! And, I told my eleventh grade students this last year about a week after a Bible class talking about how in God's eyes to commit hatred is the same thing as committing murder. So, what do my students say, "Ms. Jessie, you just killed Cupid!" I guess I did and I don't feel bad about it one bit!
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