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Who Sent the Dongs? Ask "Dick" Tracy!
Nov. 16th, 2023 07:32 pmLast night I posted "A Year of Dongs" about a mysterious, dick-filled calendar my spouse got in the mail as a gift with no return address. As I noted, we had mixed reactions to it, recognizing that it could have been a friendly joke that landed poorly while also sharing concern that it could have been a mean-spirited jibe saying, "I think you're a dick."
Well, the whodunnit? mystery did not last long. Hawk is a veritable Dick Tracy of figuring out where things in the mail come from. For one, she used to work as a corporate reference librarian, so figuring out who publishes & sells a published thing is in her wheelhouse. Furthermore, two, she has managed shipping operations, including international shipping, for years. Knowing how to find where stuff came from is her trade.
The shipping label, like I said, had no return address. She noticed that under that label was another one. It had an origination written in Chinese. Hawk searched a few terms from it and found the company in China that sold & shipped the calendar. But who ordered it? Calling China to pry that info out of a seller was unlikely to work. Especially if that was a Chinese manufacturer that sent it to a US reseller partner.
One trick about international shipping to the US is that the label needs to have a US contact. There was a US phone number on the label. It wasn't well marked, but when you know what to look for, you see it. It was in our area code. Hawk tried a reverse directory search to see what business uses that number. It turned out it was not a business number but a residential number. Hawk considered paying a few dollars to find the name associated with the number but then decided there was an easier expedient: call the number and see who answers!
Nobody answered the line, but there was a voicemail greeting. It was a friend of ours! Though probably Hawk didn't even need to hear the greeting message because her phone would have matched the number to a name in her address book as she typed it.
I suggested Hawk send a slightly sneaky text to our mutual friend, something like, "Hi, [name], what's 🍆 up?" ...Something that could leave the other person wondering if she figured out they sent the gift. Instead Hawk sent a message stating outright that she'd figured it out. Oh, well.
Well, the whodunnit? mystery did not last long. Hawk is a veritable Dick Tracy of figuring out where things in the mail come from. For one, she used to work as a corporate reference librarian, so figuring out who publishes & sells a published thing is in her wheelhouse. Furthermore, two, she has managed shipping operations, including international shipping, for years. Knowing how to find where stuff came from is her trade.
The shipping label, like I said, had no return address. She noticed that under that label was another one. It had an origination written in Chinese. Hawk searched a few terms from it and found the company in China that sold & shipped the calendar. But who ordered it? Calling China to pry that info out of a seller was unlikely to work. Especially if that was a Chinese manufacturer that sent it to a US reseller partner.
One trick about international shipping to the US is that the label needs to have a US contact. There was a US phone number on the label. It wasn't well marked, but when you know what to look for, you see it. It was in our area code. Hawk tried a reverse directory search to see what business uses that number. It turned out it was not a business number but a residential number. Hawk considered paying a few dollars to find the name associated with the number but then decided there was an easier expedient: call the number and see who answers!
Nobody answered the line, but there was a voicemail greeting. It was a friend of ours! Though probably Hawk didn't even need to hear the greeting message because her phone would have matched the number to a name in her address book as she typed it.
I suggested Hawk send a slightly sneaky text to our mutual friend, something like, "Hi, [name], what's 🍆 up?" ...Something that could leave the other person wondering if she figured out they sent the gift. Instead Hawk sent a message stating outright that she'd figured it out. Oh, well.
