Merch Aunt

Last night, Mr. Andrew and I went to see De La Soul, Nas and Wu Tang Clan. You know I can’t resist merch and these acts all have some very cool branding. Unfortunately, September was a financially trying month. Not in a terrible way. I actual took care of some important adult responsibilities like filing my late taxes and getting a will. But these things also require paying accountants and lawyers. Plus I broke my glasses and I had a weeklong bout of laryngitis that, while not exactly life-threatening, made it hard to sleep and stay awake at the same time. I was able to do the minimum of work (and it was probably of poor quality).

This is a long rambling narrative that I used to justify my next action. Buying bootleg merch. Even after two weekends of selling my personal belongings at Yard Sales to raise some mad money, after groceries and meds, I did not have enough scratch to pay $50 for a t-shirt. I’ve been to enough concerts to know that bootleggers charge $20 no tax.

The day after I began to have regrets. In today’s touring economy, the acts are probably making most of their money from merch sales. Buying a pirated T-shirt is pretty much taking money from their pocket. I promise to make it up to you Nas and Wu Tang (De La Soul didn’t have any merch available).

If you believe in payback, I wore the shirt today and suffered a series of frustrating events. I got a letter from FedEx threatening to call collections on me for outstanding duties on taxes on a package I never received. Their agent even acknowledged that it had been returned to the sender — an entity that I don’t know. The only help they could offer was an email address to write a complaint to. The threatening letter said I had 15 days to pay. The automated reply from the email said it would take 90 days to respond.
And while I was on the phone with customer service, I got a message from FedEx that a package I was expecting had been delivered. Good thing the drivers now take a picture of the parcels the drop off and the location it was delivered too. Otherwise I would not have been able to trace it to the incorrect address that it had been delivered too. Well done FedEx.
Sorry, I got distracted. What else went wrong? My pharmacy didn’t have a prescription I needed and told me they switched it to Shoppers Drug Mart, another evil empire I’d rather not patronize. I assumed that they switched it to the nearest Shoppers but they chose one that was two kilometres away. I went to the nearby store. They tried to switch it but the faraway pharmacy wouldn’t pick up the phone.

After complaining to my local pharmacy about the mix up (they said that the far SDM was easier to drive to, which only helps if you drive), I got on a bus filled with awkward teens who had no sense of personal space or hygiene and trekked out to far-away pharmacy. Luckily they had my med in stock, but said I would have to wait an hour to pick it up. I waited. And waited. I tried calling my mother in the hopes that having a loud public conversation would make them speed things up. But my mother, for the first time ever, was too busy to chat.

And I waited. And finally a woman came from behind the counter, spotted me in my bootleg concert T-shirt, and approached me as one would an undesirable, asking if I needed “assistance.”

I said I was waiting for my prescription. Had been for over an hour. She asked my name, looked up the details and began to apologize profusely. They had forgotten about it. She claimed that it had been crazy busy, but since I’d been there, sat beside the blood pressure machine for over an hour, I had seen four customers to their five pharmacists. My neighbour (he has a car) actually came by to ask about how to get the next round of COVID shots and they dismissed him with a curt “you have to do that online.” Of I hadn’t been waiting for my meds, I could’ve got a ride home!

I wish I could say my losing streak ended but there were a few more annoyances to come. For some reason, it took ten minutes to ring up my purchase. All the while the clock was ticking on my two-hour TTC transfer. For ten minutes the App claimed the bus was coming in one minute and then 24 minutes. It randomly appeared midway through, seconds before my pass expired.

What did I do to have so much malarkey happen in just one afternoon? It had to be the t-shirt. I tell you what, I’ll never buy a bootleg again.