Christmas and more

It has been a month since I was able to blog. I have to say I have missed it. For those of you who do not know what I do for a living (besides raise 3 teenagers, like that's not enough!) I am a florist. Now the name is a little easier to understand. Aunt Tilly's family garden. aka Aunt Tilly's Flower Barn. This was my second Christmas season. Last year was a blurr. We lost our electricity on the 19th with all the snow we had last year. We borrowed a generator from some friends of ours and proceeded to arrange Christmas centerpieces to the tune of 30 a day in 13 degree weather. Thank goodness for "lifer friends". You know the ones that no matter how late, or cold, or tired we may be, they are there to help you. My husbands favorite part was the chaining and unchaining for the west hill deliveries. Well....that was last year. This year we had electricity and a warm shop to work in. We were just busy! I count that a blessing in the state of economy we are in. Flowers are a funny thing, you can remember a birthday or special occasion at 10 am, and have a dozen roses at their doorstep by 2pm. In the "flower world" people can be last minute. So Christmas eve we were delivering right up till the Christmas eve service at church. It never acquired to me that when I decided to have my own shop I would never have a holiday any other place but home!

Something else happened this season that I would like to share. I only talk about this to see if I can spare someone else from the embarrassment and hardship. I was working away one day at the shop and my phone rang. The voice on the other end was a rely operator. For those of you who do not know what that is, it is used for hearing impaired. The operator reads the text message to me and them types my response back to the hearing impaired person. I had a lady that was ordering 25 poinsettias and she needed to have them ready to be picked up the following Tuesday. I had never taken a order like this before. She gave me her visa and asked for the approval # and asked that I set up the details for the shipper. The credit card went through and I gave her the approval code and set off to purchase 25 poinsettias. I got everything ready and she called back and asked if I could add 20 more. The rely operator this time said to me, " you know this is a scam". I was taken by surprise and wasn't sure I heard him right. I said excuse me? He said this is a scam made with stolen credit cards. I wasn't sure what to do. He said it was probably coming out of Nigeria and that it happens all day long. I was sick to my stomach and shocked that I could be tricked into such a horrible scam. He also told me that he would be fired if his company knew he told me. The companies stand on this is that they can not guess if the call is legal or not. Thank goodness for a honest worker at this phone company. He was willing to risk his job to help me not get in any deeper with these awful people. What about the 10 other operators I talked to in the process of getting this order together. Where was there integrity?
Just so you know the rest of the story, I called my bank and told them what had happened and that the credit card that was used was stolen, I also needed to know what to do. You know what I found out? (this story does not have a happy ending in case you want to know this up front). There is no protection for the small business owner. So I am out shipping and the cost of poinsettias plus the hours and embarrassment that I endured with the scam from Nigeria and the rely operators. I hope this will be a learning experience and a help for all that reads this.

Christmas its self was wonderful. We had a lazy day and watched football, ate till we were ill, and open presents into the evening hours. It makes me so grateful for the gift of family and friends. I will blog more about Christmas and the comings and goings of the season, I wouldn't want you to miss the story of December22nd and the whole family at the ballet.