A Personal Account
2018 started off really well for me, I know it’s only been like 20 days past the New Year yet me getting a job on the very first mark on the new calendar was indeed the greatest blessing so far this year.
However, just as good things come by, bad things simply can’t help themselves to find its way into your life. Sadly, 2018 hasn’t yet been the best year for me to “buy books”. Firstly, I made few orders in December.
Firstly, I ordered “In Order to Live” by Yeonmi Park over Abebooks, the book was expected to arrive on the 16th of January, the book hasn’t arrived. I knocked my seller-store and they told me to wait till the 27th before asking for refund. So I am still waiting for my book to gain its freedom from the clutches of the deliveryman and find its way to my home.
Secondly, I placed an order for Richard Branson’s “Finding My Virginity“, yeah you all can make a good guess, I love reading autobiography of all types of people, I find them to be far more intriguing than novels. Sadly, that book did not find its way to my home. The story is quite long but I will try to summarize it as much as possible. This same incident has been covered in my other blog as well with more specific details.
So I visited this local bookstore, I was not intending to buy any book from there. Then I remembered of Richard Branson’s latest contribution so I made my way to the reception. The cashier than asked a salesgirl to take my order. To my surprise, or rather to my forthcoming “distress”, the salesgirl face hypnotized me to such an extent that even though they did not possess the book at the time being, I made an advance order paying them Tk. 500, the book was promised to be brought by the 10th of January, 2018 imported from India while I made the order on the 27th of December, 2017. I was so disappointed with myself for this that I kept 3 days of fasting to wear off the feelings, that’s the Islamic way of repelling off feelings for someone you don’t wish to marry. 10th of January came and passed, I remembered it but I nervous in calling Miss Gorgeous, also suspecting delay was occurring due to the fact that Indians love to celebrate Christmas and the New Year wholeheartedly thus the delay might be a case of “elongated holidays” so I decided to wait. 5 days went by and still no reply came in. I then called the store. The receptionist mentioned the book still didn’t arrive and she would contact Miss Gorgeous to give me the latest updates. Miss Gorgeous called me 30 minutes afterwards apologizing the book delivery would be delayed and I had to wait. I asked about for how many days I was required to wait and she mentioned, “7 days.”
Then on the 16th, another person called and told me that she is the admin of Miss Gorgeous and she was going to take over this order from Miss Gorgeous. I suspected Miss Gorgeous might have goofed off so I shouted at the admin asking her whether my order was ever placed. She could not give me a proper answer. So the next day I stormed into their store and discovered that neither Miss Gorgeous or Miss Admin were there, they became so scared of me that they took the day off. So I asked the cashier whom I should be talking to, I was clearly fuming with anger. Luckily, instead of defending her comrades she pointed out to the Managing Director who happened to be close by. Long conversation short, he promised to update me over my case. Although I took a replacement book in exchange for the Tk. 500 I happened to pay as advance but my Richard Branson perhaps found his virginity but did not manage to make his way to my doorstep. But the purpose I titled this article as “How Looks Are Overruling Talent” is because this is an inevitable truth that nowadays true Talents are being overridden by Good Looks. Let’s be honest, at almost every retail store, there needs to be an attractive woman, either as a receptionist, salesgirl or as a cashier. Wellm This bookstore went beyond all principles as almost all of its employees serving the customers directly were attractive women and to make the matters worse, they were attractive women- not being able to perform their duties properly.
I remember I once read in one of the older issues of Reader’s Digest, they covered this phenomenon. Previously, they used to have this feature named “Ask Aunty” and over there one man complained that his boss liked to employ gorgeous women in the office but the most miserable thing was that most of them were not even able to accomplish their daily activities properly and in the end he used to get blamed for the mistakes done by one of his gorgeous colleagues. Ask Aunty took pity on him and said that this is the reality we all need to accept, so nothing doing… LOL to that. Honestly, I know a few young ladies who are exceptionally talented but they don’t have good jobs in comparison to the ones who being more charming yet less talented. Believe it or not, one of my cousins informed me that the best girl from our O Level batch, being one of the best debaters of her time- even went abroad to represent our country at various International Conferences, struggled to find a job of ALL PEOPLE and had to wait like for like 9 months till she got her first job call. It saddens me that sometimes people of such true caliber gets ignored only because their looks don’t get to stand out in the corporate world of unfairness.
Please don’t misunderstand my post here, I am not saying not all those who are good looking end up being the dumb ones. In fact we also got a handful examples of personalities with true beauty with brains. We got the North Korean defector- Yeomi Park, she’s a true beauty with brains. Moreover, one of the biggest reasons why Miss India won the Miss World 2017 is because she was termed in being a true beauty with brains, so my question is if the service industry requires good looking people why don’t they recruit the ones with the least bit of wisdom and dutifulness? Unless we set our standards right, our markets will one day be overrun by talentless people choking off the true talented ones.
So in my circumstance, it was found that Miss Gorgeous forgot to place my order completely and the worst part is she wasn’t ready to accept her mistake, rather blaming it on the courier. Now the question is how the hell the courier gets the “right to be blamed” if Miss Gorgeous never got to place an order in the first place unless the courier service is blessed with some kind of psychic powers which has an ability to foretell and deliver international orders before they are originally place. I also grew angry at Miss Admin because she refused to disclose the actual date of my order being place in India and kept saying she did not know when it was placed. Now that’s a big lie considering the fact that she is the admin of the bookstore and she was the one who took over my case from Miss Gorgeous. Additionally, she made another fault by not disclosing that their store were giving away a discount of 25% on all foreign books in celebration of their anniversary. If my book order was placed in January, I was entitled to a discount but over the cellphone she said my book was to be charged at the price which was originally agreed upon.
However, as I took the substitute book in place of my Tk. 500 advance payment, I scooped a book originally placed at Tk. 650 – “Pariah” by David Jackson much to the agony of Miss Gorgeous & Miss Admin. Well, these beautiful ladies should realize that life isn’t always their box full of cupcakes, it has its worms in it if you get to neglect them in the long run, LOL.
Lastly, on 31st December 2017, I ordered a copy of my own book- The Weekly Khutbah, Volume 3.
I wanted to keep a copy for myself, the estimated day of arrival was set during the first week of March. However, this delivery too bore a sad tale in the end. On 18th January, I got a call from UPS saying due to some complications my book, though arriving at the airport on 15th January, is now held in “prison” at the customs office. UPS then sent me a document which needed to be handed over if I am to retrieve my book. My book, which was originally priced at Tk. 1160 (in Bangladeshi currency), now requires a payment of over Tk. 2,500 in custom charge for it to get released so I need to pay more than double the price I originally paid in order to release my book so this makes the total price of the book triple than the total original price.
Sigh… so yeah, much to my distress, 2018 isn’t my year to buy books.
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