ONLINE ORDERING - SO MUCH FUN

It's a custom amongst my friends that one of us organises flowers to be delivered to whoever is having a birthday. Even though we could quite easily buy them and drop them off, there's nothing better than being called into reception to collect them and walking through the office holding them. I can't say I know what that feels like myself, but I have heard it's quite something.

Yesterday was my turn to order the little bouquets of magic.

I like to think I'm quite au fait with the internet. I do my grocery shopping online, thanks to YDE I prefer to buy clothes online and all my banking is done online. So you would think ordering a bunch of flowers would be a pretty simple task.

Not a f*ck.

Site number 1: For the FOURTH time, as required, I typed in ALL my details, my ID number, my great grandparents name, my first dogs name, my grade four teacher's name plus all the recipients details, and the loooooong drawn out birthday message. Just as I pressed 'confirm' , the site crashed like Paris's latest 'movie'. Again.

Like the end of any relationship, I swore, I cried and moved swiftly on.

Site number two was a South African site but dealt only in Euro's. Call me old fashioned, but I like to pay in rands, my bank says I should. Shedding another tear, I went down the list.

Site number three asked you to register before you could enter it. The registration form was longer than Eskom's To Do list. Do they hate money? Do they want to fail?

I realised I had now spent almost two hours trying to send a friggin bunch of flowers over the friggin internet. It would have been quicker to go down to woolies, buy the petals of joy and throw them through her office window as I drove past. But not letting the internet win, I plodded along.

Final site. Was in english, accepted SA rands and you didn't have to donate blood to register. I was so excited I chose the most expensive bouquet of flowers and threw in four balloons for good measure. At that price, I assumed they were hot air balloons, but considered birthday friend worth it. Wrote my sincere, but funny message from myself and all the girls and pressed send. In my inbox popped an email confirming my order and time of delivery. Great vibe. We're sorted.

My order:
1 x Tied Promise bouquet "Promised to make anyone feel special"
4 x balloons

What the birthday girl received:
3 x bouquets of various types delivered at different intervals during the day
1 x sad balloon the size of a lollipop shoved in between the third bouquet

While I waited for the strip-o-gram to arrive (since they were clearly in the business of sending things that I didn't order, I could only assume this was coming) I came to the conclusion that SA is clueless. Online and off.