04/20/00 -- The Sunglasses Saga

"Somebody forgot their Ray Bans."

They weren't my Ray Bans that I forgot, though.  I forgot my Killer Loop sunglasses at lunch yesterday.  It had been a little overcast, but still glarey when I left the office with my coworkers.  It was raining by the time we left the restaurant.  I didn't realize I'd left my sunglasses on the table until I was driving home from work and could see sunshine on the horizon.  It's so bright, I thought, better grab my ... oh fuck.  Yep, I realized right then and there.

I hoped that I had just left them on my desk.  Called the office, no such luck.  Nothing to see, move along.  I called Boo.  Boo, ever my enabler and hero, called the restaurant only to be told that they didn't have anything.

I spent the evening looking around online to see if there were places that still sold the exact type of sunglasses I had loved for a year and lost.   Yes, there were a handful of sites that still listed them.  Yehaw!  I was saved.

I got to work this morning, and decided to check the restaurant one more time at lunch.  Did they have my sunglasses?  No.  They had a pile of cheap-o $5 sunglasses, but not my sunglasses that had retailed for $120 a year ago.

Back at work after lunch, I hopped over to the website that I had found that still listed them and sent off my order.  I was happy.  I was going to get my sunglasses replaced.

Twenty minutes later, there was an email message in my inbox telling me that the manufacturer had discontinued that model of sunglasses and that my credit card hadn't been charged.  I was livid.  I yelled.  I screamed.   I cried.  I paged Boo online and told him.

While I contemplated jumping out the window after saying a whole bunch of nasty things to the web company who had listed them, let me order them, and then crushed my hopes by telling me they had been discontinued and that they just hadn't updated their site, Boo was my enabler again.  He whipped out the phone book and started looking for the Sunglasses Hut closest to me.  He figured he would start at the one in Park Meadows mall, and work closer and closer to home.

When he called the one on Park Meadows, they told them that Sunglasses Hut wasn't carrying Killer Loops anymore and any of the sunglasses they had had been sent up to the outlet store in Loveland and did he want the number.  Yes!   So he called the Loveland outlet store.  Did they have them?  In gunmetal grey?  Could they hold them until they closed?  And what time was that?

He dropped me a page with the good news.

So the saga ended well.  Though I think I worried the gentleman who was in the Sunglasses Hut when I walked in and he asked how everything was going.  It depends.  And it depended entirely on whether they actually *did* hold those sunglasses for me.

They did.  They held the last two gunmetal grey sunglasses they had.  One in the exact style of the pair I lost, and one in a similar style.   I bought them both.  Just in case.

And I bought a pair of visor clips.  One of them hangs out in my car.  The other hangs out on my waistband so I can clip my sunglasses there when I take them off.

Hopefully I wont' have to go through this again.