Happy Hallmark Card Day, everyone. Err…Hallmark Store Day? Err…That Day That Guys Don’t Get to Watch Sports Day? Yeah. That day. Every man reading this post knows to which day I’m referring, and every guy out there feels my pain. My little bit is the Grumpy IT Guy, so let me tell you a little about how that Most Annoying Day (okay, it’s not really, but it should be) has started to cost you more, and why they’re blaming it on technology and our guys.

I love my wife very much. Very much. I like to buy her roses. I really do. It makes everyone else in her office very jealous. I can call my local florist in the morning and have a couple dozen roses that last for a week delivered that very day on most days. Yeah, you know where this is going.

Being The Guy Who Does His Christmas Shopping on Christmas Eve, let’s just say it was the morning of February 13th, and there I was trying to send my girl the standard chocolates + roses thing. I had seen three different ads from three online vendors on television during sporting events espousing their abilities to send at the last minute and promising prices well below $92,145 for a dozen roses. Anything below $10,000 is okay on VD.

I booted my “trusty” PC that morning (I literally had to kick it to wake it up), blithely ignoring all the work ahead of me because, well, I’m in IT, and I don’t really like to do anything; I just want to surf the ‘net all day. I browse over to each of these sites, and surprise, surprise! The prices for the roses are just as advertised! Wow. Each of these sites had advertised 12-18 roses for between $25 and $50. Delivered. I’m in. Watch the love meter rise enormously for me as my wife gushes at the pretty flowers and makes everyone in her office jealous, again! Score.

Proceeding naively to checkout, I found my bill suddenly expanded to the $120 range. For $30 roses. Hmm. Opening my cart I wondered what other little goodies they shoved in without telling me anything. Nothing. Where were the fees? Delivery. Perturbed, I went to the second site. Same thing. Then the third. Guess what? $150.00 at the third.

Alright now guys, here’s the thing. You sell roses all the time. I guarantee on May 21st, there’s no extra delivery fee. I can guarantee it because I’ve done it before – on a normal Wednesday for Thursday delivery, you don’t hit me with a $35 “rush” charge. I’ll even accept the $5.00 VD fee, since you’re probably passing it on from the local delivery guys, but come on.

1. You sell flowers for delivery. It’s what you do. The prices did NOT go up. You’re just gouging me because you can.

2. Your online transaction fees did not go up from last week for today. I promise. So, we’re gonna call your $20.00 processing fee that wasn’t even included the last time I did this what it is, and guys, that smells remarkably like what comes out the south end of a north-facing Longhorn.

3. Your rush charge is completely ridiculous, and you know it. You’re pocketing all that money. I know because I called a few florists that I know who were way overbooked, and while they offered to squeeze me in, they wouldn’t take an offered bribe of $50.00 to put me higher on the list.

Stop blaming technology, stop charging me “transaction fees” for the lowest per-transaction cost-based system in the world (the Internet), and stop telling me that they might not be there on time because “the system is overloaded and being slow.”

-The Grumpy Journyx IT Guy