Life Lesson #3,982: Always Remember Your Purse

When we made the trek to Texas back in May, I brilliantly left my purse hanging on the back of a stall door in the ladies room at a Burger King in Tennessee. It was an easy mistake, as I was focusing my attention downward to the tiny human I frequently accompany to the restroom. Unfortunately, I didn't realize my purse was missing until the next day, in Arkansas, over five hours away. I managed to track it down by using phone numbers on our receipts (see, sometimes it pays to keep up with receipts). The store manager who had the misfortune of having my predicament heaped upon her to deal with was less than pleasant about my request that the purse be mailed to me in Texas. First she shot off at me, "How do I even know you are the owner of the purse!?" I proceeded to lose my cool and express my knowledge of every last detail about the purse's contents (all the way down to the little birthday verse I copied onto an old receipt to use on a birthday card for my sister) until she stopped me with, "I hadn't been IN it to know any of that." I think my furor coupled with my obvious knowledge of personal effects convinced her that a thorough investigation of my identity was not necessary. She agreed to take down my address in Texas and talk to her manager about whether or not she was even allowed to mail the purse back to me. She did not repeat the address to me, nor would she listen to further requests from me. I asked that she please call me back regardless of her answer from Corporate so that I could double-check the address with her and discuss mailing options. She agreed. Well, that call never came. I called the next morning and confirmed with a different store manager that the purse had been mailed C.O.D. the day before. I was frustrated that the lady hadn't called me back so that I could direct her to the fifty dollars cash I had in the purse (drawn for travel purposes...lot of good that did us on our trip, eh?) and urge her to pay top dollar to get the package to me as quickly and safely as possible, with a reward for her to boot. But what could I do? The deed was done. Now I just had to hope it made its way to me.

A week passed. No purse. Two weeks passed. Still no purse. Having lost packages in the U.S. postal system before, I knew better than to bother barking up anybody's tree for a whole month. If it's lost, it's just lost, it seems. A month passed, so I called Burger King again and asked the store manager who mailed the package exactly how she mailed it (not C.O.D. after all--that was too much hassle--just "straight mail" because it was gonna cost her twelve bucks just to do that!), exactly what address she wrote on it (are you kidding! that was thrown away as soon as it was on the box!), if there was a return address on the package (no, why would she put that?), if it was insured (of course not, it was just someone's purse full of credit cards, cash, and identity), if there was a tracking number or anything (have a way to TRACK a package full of prime info for identity theft? What a waste of money!), etc. Had she only called me back before carting off to the Post, she might not have been so prone to send it so ridiculously, as it would have been my dime not hers.

There are so many moments I replay in my mind and wonder if things might have turned out better IF. What if I had made her repeat the address to me, even if she was fussy about it? What if I had called back immediately after I hung up and my husband said, "You didn't tell her to use our cash to mail it." I expected her to call back, and I didn't want to tick her off any more...she could decide to just be mean and not mail it, just to spite me. She sounded like the volatile type. What if I had asked her if they had a safe she could keep it in all summer, and we would pick it up on our way back through Tennessee in August? (Though that seemed riskier than mailing it.) What if we had asked our family friends a few hours from there to make a special trip on our behalf just to retrieve my lost purse and mail it to me themselves? Maybe then it would be here, and I wouldn't still be hassling with it. But regardless of all the what-ifs, the fact remains that it isn't here and it's not likely to ever find its way to me. So the credit cards must be changed, the gift cards and cash are lost forever, my driver's license must be replaced, I'll never be able to use the new exercise ball I just bought whose plug was being "safely" carried here in my purse, that birthday card for my sister will never be created, and on and on. As I told my angry husband at the truck stop in Arkansas that day after The Dawning, if that's the worst thing that happens to our family on a cross-country road trip, maybe we should count ourselves lucky. None of us was sick, injured, or dead. Our car wasn't stolen. Our keys and cell phone were not in the purse, nor was the checkbook. I already have a fraud alert on my credit from that time several years ago when my wallet was stolen right off my desk at work, so while this is indeed annoying and frustrating, it is not the worst that could happen.

After my disappointing conversation with the BK manager, I made all the necessary calls to the postal system to find out exactly what form I needed to fill out, etc. Eventually, I made my way to a surprisingly helpful and cheerful postal employee at the local station, who looked all over the post office for the package, in case it got stuck there for some reason. Then he told me what to do to file a loss report but not to get my hopes up that the package would be recovered. It's probably at a wrong residence, and people don't often return those...at least not any time soon. That's pretty much what I thought.

So I'm sitting here filling out the Mail Loss/Rifling Report to turn in to the U.S. Postal Service, and it occurs to me more acutely than ever that there's no way they will ever find my purse with the sketchy information I can provide them. Article was mailed by: Some lady named JoAnne. Return address on article mailed: None. Article was addressed to: Me, but who knows if she had the correct address. Place of Mailing: Main post office, station or branch, etc.? Unknown. I guess Branch. Name of Place of Mailing: Middlebrook Heights...at least I thought that's what JoAnne told me, but it doesn't come up on the web as a branch in that city. Zip Code of Place of Mailing: Yeah, right. I'm not even sure it's in the same city. All I know in detail is what was inside my purse. And though I know it's terribly unlikely that I will ever see that cute red purse again, I will file the report on the hopes that I will one day be reunited with the plug for my back care exercise ball. That's about all that will still be of use to me by then.