“You’re literally asking them to send you mail!?!” He asked.
I was talking with someone much younger than me. I’d explained that I’d sold a bunch of sawhorse jigs and rigs which was super cool. But I’d flubbed the whole “online marketing” part and that was a bummer.
I described what folks had to do to order a jig. As you know, it’s nothing like the usual electronic shopping cart and checkout software we’ve come to expect. He reacted to my description as if I had antennae coming out of my head.
“I tried this online form thing but it crashed so…” My excuses were lame and getting lamer.
“…this is your URL?!?!” He demanded.
He was looking at https://adaptivecurmudgeon.com/sawhorses/.
Seeing it second hand, shrunk on his tiny cell phone screen, it looked dismal. I’m not even in the same planetary hemisphere as a “normal” presentation. “I’ve seen graffiti more skillfully executed.” He concluded.
I nodded. I had that coming. “I was kind of in a hurry and so I…” I didn’t even get to finish the rest of my rationalizations.
“You told people to cut and paste? Into an e-mail.” He was squinting at the tiny text. “It’s like a caveman did this. Do you have a Flintstones car with your feet sticking out the bottom?”
He was right. “Well, I…” I stopped and just embraced the learning experience. “It was pretty pathetic. I had no plan B when the online form croaked.”
“Wait, what?” He was flummoxed but I didn’t notice and was babbling.
“… on the other hand all of my customers were delighted. Most of them e-mailed when they received the package to say they were pleased.”
“Um…”
I still hadn’t noticed his silence. “And I put in a funny little instruction thing. Folks liked that so I put it free on my blog. Mostly it was jokes and bitching at people to turn off their cell phone.”
He had come to a screeching halt in all his complaints. He was also eyeing his cell phone, which has probably never been off.
“Yah, I fucked up.” I concluded.
“You admit it sucks…” He had a thoughtful look.
“What am I supposed to say ‘Mistakes were made?’. I really did make a goofy order form.”
“Mistakes were made?” He was smiling at the joke. “Sounds like a politician.”
“I think it was Robert McNamara.” The discussion had gone off the rails but I didn’t mind.
As always the younger generation was “fact checking” with their phone. “Looks like everyone said that.” Somehow I’d impressed him anyway. “Man, you just said your own form sucked… just like that.”
“Well yeah, when you fuck up you’ve fucked up. I’ll do better next time.” I chuckled.
We both paused, lost in thought. We were both silent for about a quarter of my cup of coffee.
“It’s nice when people say ‘That wasn’t ideal. I’ll do better next time’.” He had the dreamy look of a youth who’s been put through the wringer by modern society.
That kind of made me sad. It’s 2025 and nobody knows how to be wrong anymore. I mean, except for me who’d just done it. That’s hard on everyone.
“You whippersnappers just don’t know how hard things were in the old days!” I hammed it up to break the tension. “Why in my day we had to pan for gold and then send the flakes wrapped in wax paper. We’d buy things from the Sears Roebuck catalog and also use the catalog for toilet paper.”
The great part was he had no idea how much of my exaggerations were true and how much wasn’t. I decided to offer some true “geezer lore”:
“Not too long ago the commercial would be on TV. It would have a phone number to call but long distance was expensive and nobody had a credit card. So they’d tell you the address to which you’d send a check.”
He blinked. It was all too unbelievable.
I grabbed his phone and surfed up an example. Here it is.
“Mail your check to this place and there’s a money back guarantee…” He was laughing at the ad. I was too.
“No wonder people fell for Nigerian scams. You had to do all that to get a damn song.”
He mentioned about a dozen online software gizmos to process transactions. I knew they existed but mostly ignore them. They all had stupid names. It sounded like:
“Get the Flimflam plugin to Spazzer and that’ll send your purchase data through Nurtburst. Then you can ship it either by FedEx or Snorfdoodle.”
I think I’m going to try something called WooCommerce; which is also a dumb name.
Anyway, that’s my plan. No rush, no hurry, I’m enjoying my Christmas nice and slow, but after that I’ll try to list the jigs in some sort of sane manner. If y’all already bought all you’ll want that’s OK. I like anything that helps me learn.
I said “The past is a foreign country” and insisted we re-watch the old TV ad. 1985 really isn’t that long ago, but it’s also very long ago.
Wish me luck with WooCommerce or whatever the hell it is.
It would really blow his mind to give him one of the old time-hack numbers where “At the tone, the time will be…”
I just tried the one from my childhood, and it now gives time and temperature after a pest commercial.
It sucked learning which prefixes in your own area code were long distance, but apparently that was only a rural problem.
just make sure you offer another one for free but just pay a separate fee ? never have understood that one.
But wait! There’s more!
Write him a note in piglatin and cursive. The content of that communication is immaterial, since his generation knows not the difference between man and woman, and cannot read, write or arithmicate. An instruction for him (?) to navigate to a remote location and fornicate him/her/itself would be more trouble to explain than to demonstrate on the spot with a blunt chainsaw.
As to the sawhorse jigamabobs….coulda done all that and more with an adjustable bevel gauge, or a scrap offcut. The basic laws of geometry were once mastered in early childhood. Now, they get a participation trophy and milspec pharmaceuticals even if (or because?) they get the blocks in the right holes with a hammer.
The existing system of procurement seems to be functional, robust, and independent. Carrier pidgeon would be an improvement, because pidgeons are tasty.
Thanks.
I expect your audience leans past midlife, but techy enough to not blink at copying/pasting text into an email and sending it. This is a blog ferchrissake! Do the youth even know how to find such a thing? I mean, there aren’t enough pictures; and where’s the video telling me about what you wrote? Feh!
You’re one dude that writes long-form, sarcastic commentary on culture and making/fixing things with your own hands. No one here cares that the initial attempt wasn’t on kickbuttstarter or a dedicated payment processor fully integrated with salesfarce. I think the fact that you offer several different payment methods was very smart and fault-tolerant. Great job on a first attempt. I’m sure your next effort will be even better.
Thanks, I’m sure it’ll be better. As you pointed out my small audience is reasonably self reliant so I’m not going to go too far down the rabbit hole of user friendly software.
I would merely note the e-commerce site is gonna want some of the moola you get from each sale. Will your prices increase? Or will you instead go broke from spending more money that you get each time you sell something?
And Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and yours!
Speaking of explaining old tech to young’uns, the local radio guy was explaining how one of their interns had got a speeding ticket. The ticket said to get a money order to pay it ahead of time. so he asked co-workers how to get a money order since he never had. They told him to go to the post office, then had to tell him where that was since he had never been. He got the M.O. at the post office, then came back and asked them how to mail it. He had never mailed anything before, all his bills were online.
Merry Christmas to you and your madcap self-reliant readers.
Make it WuCommerce and everyone will think you are shipping from China, not a bad thing as it mis-directs any ire that may ensue.