How NOT to do Business Part II

In my last blog I wrote about how I had a bad experience with a business. When I hung up the phone on Friday I thought that was the end of that bad experience. I wrote in my blog about it and called it a day. I basically filed it away and figured nothing else would come of it.

I was wrong. I'm very rarely wrong but when I am I can admit it. This afternoon around 4:30pm my office phone rings. I pick up the phone without even glancing at the phone and give my usual greeting. I'm shocked to hear the voice on the other end, "Jenny, this is "stupid guy" from "stupid company" and I'm calling because..." His because would leave you floored.

This guy decided that he wanted money for doing mock ups for me. I'm sorry but what?! Yep. He explained to me that his company only provides free art work IF they get the job and that since we chose not to go with them we owe him $300.00. Excuse me? He didn't even do any art work. My graphic designer (God bless her, always working on last minute projects for me) created all the art work, all his team did was place it on a t-shirts DIGITALLY. Drag an already made logo to an already made t-shirt and arrange the logo on the shirt. Simple. Point and click. Okay, so maybe its not THAT simple but it most certainly is not 3 hours worth of work like he claimed.

I explained to him that i felt he was just doing this because he is angry that he did not get the job. When a company calls you to ask for a quote it is your job to give them an accurate description of what they will be getting. It is your job to give them what they ask for and if you don't "win" the bid you suck it up and consider the work you did to be a cost of business. It isn't like this guy designed an entire suite of products from scratch. I provided ALL the art work, it was all done for him!! I think what gets my goat the most is the fact that the ONLY reason he wants the money for pretend artwork is because we turned him down.

Not only that but during the phone conversation he mentions that he has our credit card information on file since we worked with them last year. What? Are you threatening me? Are you basically saying that you'll run our card number with or without my consent? At that point I told him that I was disappointed with his behaviour and that I do NOT authorize him to charge our card. That I have to speak to my boss about it and then I will call him back to let him know if he can charge the card or not. He goes on to say that he would rather speak with my boss directly since he is not pleased with the way that things turned out and doesn't think that my boss made a good decision as an executive and he feels as if I'm caught in the middle.

I'm not sure what I think is more insulting, the fact that he thinks I'm slow and don't understand how business works, the the president of a multi-million dollar company is stupid and makes bad decisions as an executive, or the fact that he thinks all of us are just going to sit there and take it. I mean seriously?

I told the guy thank you for his time and I'd be back with him shortly. I hung up and sent my boss an email explaining the situation and we now have preemptively contacted MasterCard in order make sure that this particular company doesn't charge our credit card.

Again I ask, what would you do if you were caught up in this situation? Would you lose your cool in a professional environment and tell this person where to shove it? Would you ignore the situation completely?  -- I'm going to call my friend who referred me to this particular vendor and let him know that not only will I NOT do business with him but I would suggest that they stop giving him out as a recommendation. What an unprofessional person.

How NOT to do business.

Today was what I'd call a rough day at work. I spent the majority of the day shooting off emails or calling people. The calls were rough. I had to inform a few companies that they lost bids to do work for us.

Let me give you a little insight. We are fast approaching trade show season in our industry. It's going to be a rough end of August through mid-October. Along with the everyday happening at work I have to plan tradeshows, make the price list for next year, put together the binder that includes the price list and product information, oh, and don't forget we are redoing a lot of packaging and launching new products. Yeah, I'm not going to be swamped AT ALL! But hey, that isn't the point of this post. The point is that we are in the midst of planning shows and we decided that we will be giving out t-shirts at some of these shows. The t-shirt will have our company name, the website, and the icons for twitter, facebook, and youtube.com (we've just recently gone into social media and launched a new website).

I called a company in Texas that does a large part of our printing of flyers, pamphlets etc. to see if they know anyone that prints t-shirts. While I was waiting for the referral to come via email I called the company that we use here in Montreal often for a quote. At the same time my boss asked me to ask our sales reps if they had a printing person that could get a good price. Let's be honest, the economy is pretty much crappy right now and we are all looking for the best price possible. I got the first bid in from the Montreal company and while I hit the forward button to show my boss I knew we wouldn't be using them. They were extremely over priced. Seriously.  The referral from my friend in Texas came through and we discussed t-shirt brand, feel, print ideas etc. while I was waiting on his quote a quote came in from one of my sales reps contacts. I informed this guy that I was waiting for a quote from another company. He said he understood.

I felt overwhelmed but I knew one thing for sure. The Montreal company was out. The referral from Texas sent me mock ups via email but no pricing. He told me that he would stay in line with what we paid last year (I was off work for a year so I have no clue what it is). I told the company that my sales rep referred me to that although they have great prices and great mock ups I am still waiting on one more bid. He told me that he completely understood. A few minutes later I got another email from him asking for more details and he said "I'm confident that I'll be the price best and I'd like to be proactive while you wait for your final quote. Can I have the following information...."

My boss made the decision last night. He wanted to go with the company that my sales rep brought to us. He managed to get us higher quality shirts at a better price and he was located closer to come of our trade shows so the shipping price would be cheaper too.  I called the guy this morning and finalized some details and gave him the green light. BUT before I could do that I got a call from the Montreal company asking if we made a decision. Unfortunately I couldn't bring myself to let her down. What I told her instead was that we were waiting for another quote. She said, "Wow, that hurt." I don't understand why that could hurt? Are we supposed to blindly just accept your pricing without looking at another company? Are we supposed to assume that you are the best priced company? I'm really sorry but over the 4 years I've worked at this company I've quickly realized that instead of being the cheapest it really is one of the highest priced companies when doing printed materials. I think it might have hurt because my boss didn't just say "Okay" instead we decided to shop around.

I then had to call the company that was referred to me by a friend. I started off all nice and friendly and brought myself to say, "I'm really sorry but we have decided to go with another company" and then the guy went off on me. He asked what the pricing difference was and if we were willing to kill a business relationship over a couple hundred dollars and how he didn't feel his company was given a fair chance. I told him that "You were higher priced on lower quality shirts, therefore I'd assume that you are going to be higher priced on the higher quality shirts too" and he kept on going in. I mentioned that the other companies price quote included 24 Adidas polo shirts as well and then he says "Yeah Adidas is just throwing free shirts at everyone these days. He must have a rejected load" Wow. Excuse me!? Can't you just shut your face and accept that we decided to go with another company? Then he said the thing that irked me the most, "I don't understand how an executive would choose to go with a completely new company when we have worked together and proved that we price well, work on short deadlines, and always deliver on time." I basically, very politely told him, "I'm sorry but last year we did take a chance on you and it worked out for us, we are hoping that this year the same thing happens."

I completely understand that a company can be disappointed when they were expecting to land a $6000 job but I did inform them that I was waiting on other bids. I told all the companies that we were waiting on other bids (except the Montreal company who came in right around $10,000). I was honest and remained professional. I don't see how the owner of a company can just bitch and moan to me about us not choosing them. I would even understand him making a comment like, "I'm really sorry/disappointed that this didn't work out, I was looking forward to working with you." I can understand him telling a business partner how he's disappointed or how he was banking on getting the job. I just don't find it was very professional of him to complain directly to a company that MIGHT have used him again in the future. I can promise you one thing though, as long as I am at the company we will NOT work with that particular company again.

So, would you ever complain directly to a customer or potential customer?

Dining Experience Gone Way Way Wrong

I could start off this post with a big fat lie and say something along the lines of "I'm not one to complain" but we'd all know that I'd be lying to you. I do complain. Isn't that why you people even bother to read this blog?

Last night had to go down in the books as the worst dining experience EVER. Seriously, my sister who NEVER complains or sends food back complained. In fact during her complaint I think she dropped the F-Bomb about 15 times....more on that later.

Let me give you a little history on this place. Last year we went to Sterlings Restaurant in Laval for my brother in laws birthday. We had reservations for 7:00pm. My husband and I were the first to arrive (very unusual, he always makes us run late) and I go to the hostess stand and inform them that we have arrived. They tell us "Just a minute while we prepare your table". Uh what the heck is the point of a reservation? Anyway, we take a seat at their waiting area and we wait for the rest of our party to arrive anyway. We were only 6 people. The rest of the group arrives and our table is still not ready. I go back to the hostess and ask her what exactly is the point of a reservation if I show up ON TIME and my table is not ready and its now 20 minutes past and I'm still waiting.. She had no answer. My brother in law got on his cell phone to call the owner of another restaurant near by to see if we could be seated there as we were HUNGRY. The other place was packed. Finally, 45 minutes later we are seated. We are seated at a MAKE SHIFT table in the bar. Yes, the bar DOES have tables but not this table. You can tell this table was just thrown there to appease us. It was in the way of everything and we kept having to scoot our chairs out of the way. It was horrible. The floor manager said he's comp our drinks. I rolled my eyes. The food was spectacular. My husband LOVES this place. We actually go pretty often, just the two of us, on a random Tuesday night.  We've never been disappointed.

The end of the night arrives and guess what. Our drinks weren't comped. Now what are you supposed to do? "Excuse me you said you'd give me a free round of drinks?" We just shut our mouths, paid the bill, and went on with our wonderful lives.

Fast forward to a year later. It is a friends birthday and his wife organized for all of us to go to Sterlings. Although last time their timing wasn't the greatest the food rocks. Seriously. Try the Prime Rib there. George and I are the first to arrive again (maybe that is what started the whole night off wrong). I go to the hostess table and inform them that we are here and have a 7:30pm reservation either under the name Nicole or Rody. The hostess and floor manager look at me as if I have 4 heads. Again I say Nicole OR Rody. The floor manager says "Follow me".

We walk past the bar, past the kitchen to the main dining room. He stops short of actually entering the dining room and says, "Second table on the left..." So I look around. Second table on the left is a round table set for 6 people. Perfect. We go sit down. A few minutes later the floor manager comes back and says "Sorry this table is reserved. Your party is already here," and he points to a larger table next to us filled with strangers. I say, "No we are not with them. This table is reserved for us." He says "But the Nicholas party is there." Okay thats great, I'm not with Nicholas. Again I say NICOLE OR RODY. He says we can keep the table either way...As if he is doing me a favor. The table was reserved for us to begin with just because those half wits can't read their own reservation chart....

So by 7:38 we are all seated. My sister and her husband have arrived, Nicole and her husband have arrived. We are all looking over the menu. The prime rib here is so good that it has limited quantities. Seriously. It's written on the menu. As the waitress takes our DRINK order my husband asks, "Do you still have prime rib available" and she said "Yes". Perfect. We place our order for our food as soon as we get our drinks. All the men wanted prime rib, I wanted Chilean sea bass, Nicole and my sister order filet mignon. Perfect.

We are sitting around for 30 minutes just drinking our drinks and munching on bread and butter (and I'm insisting they not eat so much bread because we ordered A LOT. We each got an appetizer and a main meal). Our waitress comes back (with no food) and says "I'm sorry I have some bad news but we do not have any more Prime Rib. The kitchen has just informed me". Excuse me? We asked for this over 30 minutes ago. It took over 30 minutes for the kitchen to be like "hey...no more prime rib okay?" I'm calling bullshit.

I tried to think of it logically. The waitress probably entered our appetizers into the computer first and then our main meal. I mean if you punch them at the same time the food will all be ready at the same time and that isn't right.....But its not what happened. I mean if that were the case you would have realized this WHILE we were eating our appetizer but we aren't. Have you even freaking punched in any part of our order?

My husband is now upset because it is the ONLY thing he eats from that restaurant. The birthday boy in a huge huff was like, "Just charge us for our drinks and we are leaving". My sister and I are like, "Um they have really good things on the menu that aren't prime rib" and my brother in law is very upset because he wanted that prime rib. The waitress saw the looks on our faces and obviously heard the comments and immediately went to get the owner. The owner apologized for the mix up and said he's comp our drinks. I rolled my eyes at that one. My brother in law flatly tells the owner that besides the prime rib the steak at this place sucks. He's tried it before and was less than impressed. I tried to tell the birthday boy and my brother in law that I've had a few things from the menu that I liked a lot to offer some suggestions. The owner insists that my brother in law order the filet mignon and if he doesn't like it he doesn't have to pay for it. My brother in law agrees.

So now this is what we ordered.
Me - Chilean Sea Bass
Husband - Veal Chop (cooked medium)
Sister - 8oz filet mignon (cooked medium)
Best Friend - 8 oz filet mignon (cooked medium)
Birthday Boy - Chicken breast
Brother in law - 12 oz filet mignon (cooked medium)

This is what we received.

Me - Chilean Sea Bass
Husband - Veal Chop (cooked medium)
Sister - 8 oz filet mignon (cooked BLUE, in other words NOT COOKED)
Best friend - 8 oz filet mignon (cooked medium)
Birthday boy - Chicken Breast
Brother in law - 8oz filet mignon (cooked medium)  (Yes 8oz instead of the 12 that was ordered)

At first my sisters steak was okay. In fact I made a joke that from the outside it was dry. The first few bites were medium and then it just got uncooked. It was disgusting. In fact it was cold. My brother in law was looking at his plate saying it wasn't a 12 oz. He's like "This has to be an 8oz". We asked the guy who brought the food and he said it was 12oz. Our waitress comes back to us and informs us that she heard 8oz when he ordered therefore it is an 8oz not a 12oz. That's bullshit. My brother in law ordered his meal in french since that was the waitresses first language. I heard him say 12 because I heard the word DOUZE a few times. In fact I thought he had ordered the filet mignon with DEUX shrimp. I knew that the number 2 was involved. (At this point we hadn't realized my sister's steak was raw, she eats slow).

Then she starts to poke at her food and audible moos come from it. She's disgusted and I'm very happy I am eating fish. Her and her husband trade plates because he says its not blue, its just medium. It's totally not medium. It's raw. If my husband won't eat it then its raw. The waitress comes to ask "Is everything okay here" and you hear 6 voices in unison say "NO!" She looks very taken back.

Birthday boy basically verbally attacks the waitress and that is where I chime in and say "It's not her fault that the kitchen ran out of prime rib or undercooked the meat. It is her fault for ordering the wrong portion size." Again she insists that she heard only 8 oz for my brother in law. But she is very sorry for my sister's steak. She walks away. The owner comes up to speak to us to see what is wrong and at this point my sister is about to fly off the lid so she goes out for a smoke. The owner tries to tell her he will fix her meal, give her something else to which she replied, "I don't want anything from you. I'm never coming here again."

The owner walks away unable to do anything. The waitress avoids our table. My sister returns from her smoke and now the floor manager walks by and causally asks, "How are things" and best friend replies, "You don't want to know, just walk away." He didn't walk away. He tried to listen to 5 people explain at the same time. I say 5 because my husband hates confrontation and walked away when I opened my mouth. It's usually not pretty when I complain.

My sister decided to explain to the floor manager what happened starting with last year. She used the following phrases, "last year we got fucked" "even though we got fucked we came back" "and then we fucking hear" "and again we were fucked" "and now I'm fucked" "I'm never fucking coming back" "I've fucking had enough" and a few other variations that I can't recall at the moment. She did drop the F bomb at least 15 times.

At this point I explain everything to the floor manager excluding what happened last year and excluding the word fuck. I expressed our dissatisfaction, how we were upset to learn about the prime rib, and how after informing us that there was no more prime rib after SPECIFICALLY requesting it that our table should have been our waitresses and the kitchens top priority. Like, if you have to mess up on an order don't let it be our table. The owner had come to our table BEFORE our meals arrived. It should have been a clue to step up your game. His response floored me, "But its a Saturday night and we are busy." It was my turn to look at HIM as if he had 4 heads. I responded, "Yeah Saturday happens once a week. You should be used to it by now." He said he had a big group come in and they ordered a lot of prime rib and yadda yadda. I explained that we were also a group, a group of 6. If your restaurant consistently runs out of a specific cut of meat every Saturday do you not decide as management to inform the owner that there is always a shortage and maybe just maybe you should order more of that particular cut? He had no response.

He apologized and offered us a 50$ gift certificate per couple and explained that our coffee and dessert were complimentary.  As soon as he leaves the owner comes back and speaks to us to find out what went wrong and explain that every Saturday they cook 4 prime ribs. Some weeks they run out, some weeks they throw them away. Uh, cook 5. But you know what. He's smart. Their entire staff is probably trained to always answer "Yes we do have prime rib". Take the order. How many people per party will order the prime rib? It's not always 100%. Ours was 50-50. By the time you are informed of their shortage you have already had a drink and started your appetizers. How many people are going to get up and leave versus staying? 2-98%? He knows he isn't going to lose the customer the majority of the time so why buy more meat that you'll throw away? He's basically converting those lost prime rib sales into other meals that would have been thrown out at the end of the night. Fuckin smart thinking man!

So my husband and the owner are now talking. George explains to him what happened last year and the owner looks embarrassed. He's heard this story before. The accountant that my husband uses for his company is the same one that this guy uses. After our last dining experience my husband just mentioned it in passing to his accountant. The accountant called the owner (while in front of my husband) and the owner was like, "oh my god. I'm so sorry. Tell them to come back and I'll make sure to take care of everything." We never went back because we aren't all about getting free food. We just want good service.
We order our coffee, we eat our desserts. We get our bills. I laughed. Once again, our drinks were NOT comped. I told my husband I was going to say something and he was like "you are going to complain about 15$." Yes because its times 3 couples therefore its 45$ and they said they would be comped. Everything has been shitty from the start of the night! He wouldn't let me complain. He pointed out that we did get a 50$ gift certificate per couple, we did get our coffees and desserts comped and to just leave it be.

The owner also told us next time we come to ask for him personally and he'll take good care of us. They also comped my sister's raw filet mignon.  I told the owner that I personally will not come back on a Saturday night. I've never had any problems going on a Tuesday night and I would do my best to convince the rest of the group to try it again on a random week night.

Overall here is my opinion on the food that was edible:

Grilled Octopus - Tasted great but they should have used red onion not white to garnish the dish. Not a big enough serving of it to charge $14

Fried Calmari - It was okay. Nothing to write home about.

Grilled Merguez Sausage - Not my cup of tea.

Greek Salad - Very good. They don't use the cheap feta, its actually REAL feta. Still not enough of a portion to charge $15 for.

House Salad - Whatever. It's a house salad. You can't really screw that up.

Chilean Sea Bass - It was good. Not the best I've ever had and not the worst either. It was good but seriously for $33 I would expect more than a 4 to 6 oz cut of fish. Seriously. I would rather make it at home for that size.

Veal Chop  with Port Reduction Sauce - AMAZING. No complaints from me or my hubs.

Grilled Chicken Breast - Birthday boy was impressed. Said it was very good.

Filet Mignon (cooked properly) - Very good. It's their second specialty dish

Oh so tired.

I think I'm going to make this my theme song. I'm so tired. Sheesh I'm tired. Damn I'm exhausted. Wow, I'm beat. Yep pretty much sounds like things I can be heard saying over the last FOREVER. I'm just sooooo tired all the time.

You know how Sundays are meant to be the relaxing days? Yeah, not so much. It seems like Saturday is the running around day and Sunday is the do home errands day. Well today consisted of baking and I can honestly say I'm tired from doing that. I made two batches of fudge, 2 batches of greek shortbread cookies, and 2 batches of chocolate chip cookies. Oh word of advice, if you are baking be sure that you don't have people over because they tend to eat a lot of cookies and then it doesn't even look like you made that many because so many are chilling in their tummies...I'm just saying.

So after baking all day we decided to order dinner. Well that was a crappy idea. I called to place the order at 6:15 and was sold that the food would arrive between 30 and 45 minutes. Yeah, dinner got here at 8pm. You'd think there was a blizzard or something outside but it was just normal snow fall. Like 1 to 3 cm. We got the food for 50% off but seriously, it wasn't worth it. By the time the food got to us what was meant to be hot was cold, what was meant to be cold was hot, the pitas were soggy because the tomatoes had been left cut on the sandwich for too long. All in all, I would have rather eaten fudge for dinner but my husband doesn't seem to think that its healthy for me or Demi. I can tell you that Demi liked the sliver of fudge a lot more than then food she ate. Oh, maybe thats me talking and not Demi.

So I've been reading people's blogs and following them on twitter and I think to myself "These people are freaking crazy!" What people? The pregnant ones. The ones who ask 80 million questions about their pregnancy, the ones who I am CONVINCED are only having "phantom" symptoms of various things. Ones who want to feel something because they think they should or because everyone else is. Yeah it bothers me. Like sure, I have pregnancy questions too but I don't bother the whole net with them. Either I troll the internet for medical journals to answer my questions or I call my OBGYN who is not only amazing but her assistant knows SOOOOO much. I always get an answer right away. If the assistant doesn't know then the doctor personally calls me back before the end of the day.

On Friday I kind of avoided blogging and being on the internet because in all honesty I started to get paranoid. Normally Demi kicks me a lot but on Friday she was rather still. I started to wonder a million things, mainly "Is something wrong". Instead of posting it on FB, my blog, and twitter I sat online and did some research. Turns out that for as far long as I am its very normal for Demi not to always be active. It's after 28 weeks that I should be concerned if I don't feel her move too much. I read on the internet but I was still a bit freaked out so I called our Info Sante number (Health Info) and spoke to a live nurse who told me its very normal. If I was really freaked out I could try to push on various places on my tummy to try to get a reaction out of her. I did that and I laid on the couch on my side and suddenly my little soccer player was on fire.

I guess my point is that while although Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are meant to be an outlet and a good place to get advice, I wouldn't trust my babies health or life to it. Sure a lady in North Carolina might have experienced something similar and thinks its normal while a lady in Texas never did and thinks its horrible and I should rush to the hospital. Social networking sites and blogs really shouldn't take the place of a health care professional.

Okay enough ranting. I'm going to lay down because very soon I'm going to fall asleep at the computer. Part 2 of baking commences tomorrow.

NaBloPoMo: 11/31

Dear Cleaning Lady & Dear Husband:

*Open Letter to my Cleaning Lady*

Dear Cleaning Lady,

I am writing you this letter because I want thank you for the wonderful job you do cleaning my house. In fact, my house was spotless today so I decided to take pictures and post them on Facebook. You do a wonderful job. I appreciate everything you do however I have some comments that I'd like to make and hope that you do not take offense.


1. You are a cleaning lady, not an interior decorator. Can you please stop moving my vases, candle holders, and things around. Everything is put exactly where I like it. I figured you would have noticed when you come back and find it back where I originally had it instead of where you have moved it. I swear, it looks good the way I have it.

2. Please stop doing my laundry. I know this sounds ungrateful but I really prefer to do my own laundry. I'm very picky about how things are washed and the bleach in the laundry room is only for using to clean, not actually wash my clothes with it. I don't wash anything with bleach. That's right I don't even wash my whites with bleach because over time it makes things turn yellow, it melts the clothes and pretty please stop washing things in hot water. I love my clothes and wash them with black to retain their color and there are a lot of things I won't throw in the dryer. I love that you are doing this extra thing free of charge but please, I'd rather do it myself.

3. Please do not redo/reorganize my kitchen cabinets. I have things organized in a way that I can find them. I also don't like coming home to find my unopened bag of sugar open and now in a really huge plastic tub that takes up more room then the bag of sugar did. I would understand if it was an open bag and it went into a smaller Tupperware to save space but this thing is massive. Also, don't open my pasta bags and put them in Tupperware. I use my Tupperware for other things. Like, for storing things in my fridge that are already cooked or to send food to my father in law.

4. You know those bottles of infused oil I have on my counter every time you come? No its not because I cooked the night before and forgot to put them back. Those infused bottles are beautifully decorated (hand painted) and have wonderful seasonings inside to make the bottle pretty. It belongs on the counter so its a decoration AND its handy for when I cook. Would it make sense to cook in the kitchen and keep my pots and pans in the bathroom? Nooooope! It also doesn't make sense to have my infused oils in the cabinets. They need to be handy.

5. Please stop putting Dallas' shampoo in the shower. My husband tends to be pretty bobo-ish at times and I'd hate for him to suds up his head with puppy shampoo. Dallas is the only one who uses the bath tub therefore we have his puppy shampoo next to the tub on the shelf thing. I've personally never used puppy shampoo but I don't think I want to know what it is going to feel like if it accidently gets into my eyes? Or imagine my husband goes out and all of a sudden these dogs start chasing him because they smell a freshly washed puppy?

6. The book that is on my night table really shouldn't be put back on the book shelves. I have a hard time finding my book when you do that. Is it under my coffee table in the living room? Is it on one of the book shelves in the junk room? Oh dear lord, please tell me you didn't put it in the basement. It's completely undone down there and to be honest with you, I'm scared to see it!

That is all I have for you. If you have any complaints about me and BooBoo just let me know and I'll work on it. I'd really like it if you could work on these as well and our mutual working relationship will prosper!

Thank You,



*Open Letter to Husband*

Dear BooBoo,

I love you very much and I have very few complaints. If you could work on these two things I'd love you even more.

1. Please for the love of God do not wash clothes. I went to take Dallas' Montreal Canadiens blanket out of the dryer this morning and I found that not only did you wash that but you washed our throws (one brown and one white) with kitchen towels (white) and some black socks and a blue shirt of yours. Honey, you have to wash like colors with like colors.

2. When you walk in through the front door or garage door there is a closet or coat rack and shoe racks. Please put your shoes and jacket there. Do not use my kitchen chairs as a coat rack or the wall between the garage door and the kitchen as a shoe area. I almost tripped on your shoes coming into the house today. Please put your jackets and shoes away or slowly you will notice you own less and less things :)

Love,

Your wifey!