I was invited to do a project this week, and it involved going someplace to do it! That’s the first sign that things are getting back to normal, when you’re not asked to figure out a remote version of anything. Fortunately my clothes were ready and they fit. Still, I got an early start to make sure I remembered how to do the morning routine, seeing I had given it up fourteen months ago. The traffic turned out to be easy as well, so I guess navigating the rush hour is the same as learning to ride a bicycle, and one never forgets. Also, the same doofusses who were making the commute difficult last year are still out in force this year. Some things never change.
The best part of the project was being in a space with another person. It had awkward moments, mostly when we had to navigate one-way corridors and remember to not enter by the exit only door in the building, but we had checked with each other and our immunity was assured. Thank goodness we also still had a sense of humor, because when we started the project, we needed it.
The task was to spend a day each week mailing out gift cards of various denominations. The word we received was that the prizes had been counted, verified and sorted, so my partner obtained the weekly names and prize amounts, and I did the addressing, stuffing cards and mailing them out using labels on envelopes.
My partner had instructed somebody who had done the ordering and receiving part to leave the materials for the project in a certain locked drawer. They ended up in another drawer which we had to hunt for. Fortunately they were someplace with a key which was available. That would have ground the whole process to a halt immediately. However, it set the tone for what was to come.
My partner supplied the names of the recipients, so my first job was to pull the addresses and type labels to go on the envelopes. This part went smoothly, as I am blessed by my nearly forty years of experience in this realm. Labels were typed, placed on the envelopes, and when the final piece was emailed to us–which gift cards went to whom, which was determined by random drawings–it was time to handle the cards.
From my understanding of how the process began, the box of gift cards arrived and were processed by another party. When we opened the box, we expected them to be rubber banded together by denomination, but no labels appeared on the individual piles; not even a sticky note.
The card values started at ten dollars to one hundred dollars. The amount was only on the card itself, and each gift card had its own holder folded in thirds, with semi circles into which the card’s corners were inserted to secure them inside, then the holders closed with a tab. The person before us apparently was either not told the whole story about how the distribution was to be done, or they may not have been running their day on full mind power. Every holder was taped shut on all open sides, with one piece of tape over the tab closure. It was impossible to read the dollar amount on the card, and it wasn’t written on the generic holder. We looked at each other and expressed our surprise, but thank goodness it was my burden alone to sort it all out, since she had other tasks to do.
Settling in at a huge desk with my envelopes at my side, and my partner’s blessing, I popped a holder open with my letter opener and saw that the first card was ten dollars. Matching it to a ten dollar recipient, I then pulled another card from the same rubber banded stack, and opened it to find a fifty dollar card. So not only were all the holders sealed shut, but nothing was sorted.
My afternoon was spent slicing open several dozen gift card holders and trying to match them up to recipients. Sometimes I went through several ten dollar cards to find one of the rarer hundreds when a winner popped up. Sorting piles helped, and in the end I did not have any odd cards out, which is statistically a miracle.
Mind you, there are a few more days of this to come, taking apart somebody else’s fruitless labor and adding to ours. At least the task was done by day’s end. And I got out of the house and went out. And saw another person. And did a project. It’s normalcy and craziness rolled into one. And it felt kind of good.
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