Order Minimums

Fernando has had, as has been related, a number of snafus with his distributor as a result of their recent “corporate restructuring.” Fernando assumed these hiccups could be managed and worked around and that eventually things would settle down and normalcy will resume with everyone being happy.

Oh, Fernando. How silly and naïve you are.

Fernando's new releases were absent once again on this Tuesday and, in this case, Fernando had not even received the email stating his order had been processed and his account debited. Now that was bizarre, since he had at the very least received confirmation emails in the past. So he phoned the distributor and got hold of his account representative.

“Butcher and Clothier, this is Annie.”

“Yeah, hi, Annie. This is Fernando from the Dominion of Movies.”

“Oh, hi, Fernando! How are you?”

“Troubled, quite frankly. I don't have my releases for today and I have not even received the email I usually get letting me know my order has been processed. I'm calling to find out what my order's status is.”

“Okay, let me pull up your account and take a look....”

Annie taps away at her keyboard as Fernando waits. After a few moments, she says, “It seems your order has not yet been processed. It is set to be processed and delivered tomorrow.”

“Um. That doesn't really help me for today. Why the delay?”

“Let me check.” A brief pause. “It seems your order for this week was under the minimum.”

“Minimum? What's this about a minimum? There's never been a minimum before.”

“Well, this has been in place since February.”

Ah. That's when the much-lamented “restructuring” occurred. “I've never run into problems with order minimums before. Never. This week is considerably busier than ones in the past. I've got The Mechanic, The Rite, Roommate. Three weeks ago it was just filler crap like Sacrifice and Blood Out. There's no way that week met the minimum and this week doesn't.”

“It must have.” She says this in a neutral, matter-of-fact tone that suggests her interpretation of events is infallible.

So Fernando does what he does best: he finds concrete evidence to refute her blatantly incorrect statement. He digs about in his filing cabinet, retrieves his invoices from April, and fishes out the invoice in question. “I spent $109.37 that week. There is no way that my multiple copies of those three movies for this week come to less than $109.37, unless you guys have decided to start offering new DVD releases for less than $10 each.”

Faced with such irrefutable evidence, Annie can only respond, “I don't know what to say to that.”

Fernando sighs in consternation that she can't fess up to her mistake as Annie continues, “We'll also bundle in your movies for next week.”

“That in no way helps me with my lack of new releases for today.”

“I'm really sorry this happened. I'll make sure this doesn't happen again.”

“Please do so. I'll call you if any further issues crop up,” Fernando says with finality.

“Okay. Sorry again. Bye.”

“Good day.”

Fucking deplorable.