#291 Forgetting you ordered something online and then having it randomly show up

Neil Pasricha

Goodbye, perfume.

When I was a little kid I dreaded walking through Perfume Alley at the front of the department store. Holding my mom or dad’s hand I’d squeeze my face real tight while walking past lipstick-smeared smilies standing in front of shiny glass-n-brass countertops holding tiny square Weapons of Mass Irritation.

Yes, I dreaded those long walks through Stink Jungle but they seemed necessary at the time. After all, sheets and toys and clothes for boys were all stationed behind those invisible clouds of strong smells and toddler migraines.

In those days there wasn’t an option.

But in these days it’s different.

Click, click, you’re done. Click, click, that was fun. Click, click, back to reruns.

And when you turn off the computer, when you shut off that screen, when you put away your wallet, when you leave the machine — well, if you’re like me one thing happens immediately.

You completely forget about it.

So whether it’s new books or concert tickets or video games or cricket wickets, the point is that you forget it’s coming and you forget you bought it. This is the beauty of shopping in Your Own Smell, folks. Soon a day passes, then another, then another one passes, and then a package arrives…

And what a surprise!

In a cardboard disguise!

It’s a feast for the eyes!

That makes you scream to the skies!

AWESOME!

The Book of Awesome comes out in Germany next week! Who can translate the cover?

Photos from: here and here

51 thoughts to “#291 Forgetting you ordered something online and then having it randomly show up”

  1. FANTASTICH!!! The opposite of THIS awesomeness would be when you find yourself still paying for something on a credit card that you don’t even have anymore. A friend of mine recently went to the Lady Gaga concert with his wife and the tickets were super expensive, however, he had to buy them WAY in advance (11 months) so by the time the show came up, it was “all profit” as they say.

    1. That is like using a credit card for food, groceries or restaurant, not so awesome. I don’t like paying interest for something already gone.

  2. Fantastic

    1000 everyday things that make us happy.
    The smell of fresh bread rolls
    the first snow flakes
    reaching the last open gas station with an empty fuel tank.

  3. While my grand-daughter was visiting last June, she retreived a coupon for a Snap, Crackle and Pop soccer tshirt…we excitedly ordered her favorite available colour choice…turquoise off the internet…we just couldn’t wait!!!
    While my grand-daughter was visiting this January, we had completely forgotten about Snap, Crackle and Pop, when just in perfect timing for her 5th. birthday the parcel arrived! And it was both exciting and awesome:)

    1. The same thing happened to me! I was able to order a free tshirt using a code from my cereal box, and was dissapointed to find out that it would take 8 – 12 weeks in the mail. So of course when it finally did show up, I had forgotten that I had ordered it. But whether your 5, or in first-year uni and living in rez, a parcel with your breakfast cereal shirt is pretty awesome :)

      1. That’s for sure, breakfast cereal prizes ARE awesome at any age.
        I got the movie “Blast From the Past,” when I was about 45. Being a “flower-power” 60’s child, I find this to be one of the best movies of all time…and I was like Bill and Ted, totally awesome dude…BONUS:)

  4. This happened to me when my very own Book of Awesome arrived in the mail.

    I had completely forgotten that one would greet me on my doorstep in the near future, and when I finally opened the box, smelled those wonderful pages, and read the first few (dozen) entries, my day drastically improved.

    Also, this happened with headphones, but it wasn’t as dramatic.

    Thanks, Neil :D

  8. As I see a translation has already been given. What a pitty that it never sounds as good in German as it does in English.
    I really hope the book will be a success here, too. I told all my friends about it.

  9. german translation? oh no! fantastisch? it’s like watching how I met your mother in german: just not good. my suggestion: obergeil! :)

  11. I am one of those people that wonder where my order is only a week after I ordered it. I have had my moments of forgettfulness, though. I think my latest was during Christmas time when I ordered basically EVERYTHING online and the place shipped the stuff in 4 shipments, weeks apart. By the time I got to the 3rd shipment I had forgotten what could have been in there. Very exciting!

    1. Me too. I ordered something last Thursday and I was waiting for the follow-up email with the tracking number. I didn’t get that email until yesterday! Oh the suspense! But at least I can obsessively track it now…it’s in Pennsylvania.

      1. Yep. That’s me, too. If I order something, I wear myself out tracking it until it arrives. This includes watching for the delivery man on the day it’s set to arrive. Is that the UPS man?! FOR ME?! Nope … for the neighbors. UGH.

        1. I wait for the delivery guy out of necessity. I ordered my very expensive DSLR camera and was at school checking on it’s location. To may horror, the status said “delivered” a day early! I raced home to find the box sitting on the sidewalk under my mailbox for any kid to come by and kick into the street or some shady lurker to steal! And an hour later there was a downpour. Thank goodness I got to it before anything happened.

  12. gotta say this happened to me yesterday. i pre-ordered the book of even more awesome and forgot about the treats i would be getting in the mail. they arrived yesterday amongst some bills and it was great! thanks so much!

  13. This is why I never look at my Netflix queue to see what’s coming next. It’s so exciting when I see that red envelope in the mail, because I have no idea what’s in it. :)

    1. ahahah that’s so true, same thing here!
      my boyfriend made the list… and then forgot all about it
      every Netflix envelope…. A MYSTERY! :D

  14. Americans realizing that everything in our world does not have to be artificially perfumed and fragranced….now that would be AWESOME!!!

    1. Ya, I’d take authentic body odor anyday, especially of the one heading into the lake for a dip…can I order him on line? I think I’d remember he was on the way…OH right that was yesterday, dangit…I personally thought it would be the one to receive the most responses ever, if it had hung around for awhile longer:)
      Moving on…do the Awesome books have pictures?

    2. Seriously! Sometimes it’s so hard to find unscented versions of products. That’s one of the reasons I hate cleaning; everything I use makes me sneeze.

  15. Also awesome: getting checks in the mail. Whether it’s a rebate check, reimbursement for a business trip, or a tax return, those checks take so long to process that by the time they arrive at your mail box, you’ve forgotten all about them. It’s like free surprise money!

      1. Why would you let a tax return get old and wadded up? On my grad school budget, any checks that come my way go straight to the bank!

  16. I don’t get to experience this moment much, because I’m usually the type that hits “submit” to buy and item, and then rush over to the “order status page” and continue to hit “refresh” for 3-4 days straight until the item arrives. So, not too many surprises for me.

    I adopted on-line shopping pretty early, and am a very avid fan.. I recently found a page on Amazon where you can look back over every item you’ve ever purchased from their site.. I made my first purchase from them in 1999 and have since bought some ~350 items. Over about 12 years, that averages to about 30 items purchased per year. Uhh.. that sounds like a lot. Maybe I’ve got a problem, or I just REALLY like Amazon..

    1. Oh, I didn’t know about that. I had to go look up my order history. I only have 46 orders starting in 2004, but the first few years have 1 order each and in subsequent years the number of orders increases. I already have 5 this year and it’s only March. Also, my earlier orders are mostly textbooks and my more recent ones are electronics accessories. Do you REALLY like Amazon like you REALLY like Nutella?

      1. Well, it’s difficult to like an on-line retailer as much as you like a delicious hazlenut chocolate spread, so it’s difficult to compare.. sort of like comparing Apples and Oranges.. or comparing Nutella to Amazon.com.. :)

        However, if we were to rank my love of Nutella vs. all other food products, and then compare my love of Amazon.com vs. all other on-line retailers, I think you’d find a similarly high ranking for both, relative to the rest of the field.

        Btw: To be fair, my 350 number was based on items not orders. My order total is certainly much less, because I’ll often place orders with multiple items. (There is another place where you can go to “Improve your recommendations” or something, and it allows to you rate every individual item you’ve ever ordered..)

        1. Speaking of recommendations, before my sister had her own Amazon account, she had me order some books for her. She’s a pharmacy student and the books were all things for some classes she had … and were all related to bacteria, prescription drugs, microbes, organic chemistry, etc. Anyway, after getting such recommendations as one of my latest (Disease: Identification, Prevention and Control), I decided she definitely needed to get her own account.

          1. Ha! Too funny! :)

            That reminds me of all the funny recommendations I got for a few weeks after ordering the first season of “Saved by the Bell” on DVD for a friend.. (I swear.. my friend asked for it as a gift!).. Well, I basically was inundated with recommendations to buy Full House and Growing Pain DVDs for weeks..

  17. Totally Unrelated Comment:

    For those of you who read frequent commenter (and secret breaker) Chad Upton’s terrific award-winning blog “Broken Secrets” (and if you don’t, what the heck are you waiting for??), you’ll definitely want to check out the March 7th post on Blue Eyes.

    You’ll get a chance to see a picture of 1000awesomethings.com commenter extraordinaire: jdurley!!

    Well, technically, you’ll just get a GIANT close-up of her right eye, but you’ll see that it is in fact a very pretty blue. And to tie this back to this site, you’ll realize why she decided to tape on those super cool and totally not-unattractive eye patches every night to protect her eyes.

    Czech it out, over at brokensecrets.com!

    1. More like : Totally Fabricated Comment!

      While that is, indeed, a very nice eye, it is not mine. Mine are more greenish (the rarest of the rare). Pretty much if it’s a recessive gene, I has it.

      But please! Don’t let this stop you from checking out Chad’s blog! And while you’re there, at Chad’s most excellent blog, Brokensecrets.com, check out the article from Feb. 7th “The Meaning of the Digits on your Credit Card” for a photograph of Freddo’s credit card. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you used it to shop on Amazon.

      Cheque it out, over at brokensecrets.com!

      1. hmmm.. apparently, the eye belongs to (or was taken by) a jdurfey, rather than a jdurley.. My mistake..

        a close mistake like this reminds me of that old Simpson’s scene where Burns has the infinite monkeys typing on infinite typewriters and they type: “It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times…”

        Stupid monkeys!

        And stupid Freddo, apparently! :)

  20. Mail of any description makes me do a happy dance. The anticipation, the big reveal when your key clicks in the mailbox… one of life’s simple joys.

  21. How about the opposite? When you order a gift for someone else (shipping it directly to them) and completely forget that you’ve ordered it. And then suddenly, it arrives and you hear from the recipient and they are excited and grateful and singing your praises! AWESOME!

  22. Reminds me of something that happened a couple months ago. I received a package from Amazon, but I hadn’t ordered anything from the site in over a year. I opened it, and it turned out to be a wireless modem. I checked out my Amazon account, and, sure enough, I had ordered that modem in December 2007. I had completely forgotten about it. I no longer needed it, so I just listed it on the site and sold it.

  24. Who else tried to read the cover of the book out loud, even though you don’t speak German? lol

  25. This happened today, actually! I got home from work to find a package from Amazon.co.uk that wasn’t supposed to come until next week, so I had completely forgotten about it. BUT IT ARRIVED :D And my day was magically better.

  26. Wuhu, FANTASTISCH as translation is pretty bad.
    I’ m German, so i know ;)
    But I’m glad it was translated.

  27. German book title:

    Fantastic!
    1,000 everyday things that make us happy
    The smell of fresh bread, the first snowflake, reaching the last open gas station when your tank is empty

  28. This makes me laugh. Last Christmas my husband pre-ordered a sequel to one of his video games. He totally forgot about it until it showed up at our doorstep yesterday. Totally awesome!

  30. Pingback: 1000 Awesome Things.......... | infoplanetarium.com

  31. I love reading through a post that will make people think.
    Also, thank you for allowing for me to comment!

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