March 26 – “Miracle Central”

I experienced another miracle yesterday.  It involved Office Depot.  Guess I should explain.

 

Since next week is Easter and our big sunrise service on the beach, one of my responsibilities is to put together the booklet that contains the words to the songs that we will sing.  I touched base with our worship pastor to get his song list and got started.  I even worked overtime to make a mock-up of what a completed copy would look like, with print on both sides and the appropriate internal paging system intact.  I printed out a one-side-only set of pages.  I even made a digital copy on a flash drive - Word and PDF files.  I was all set for this one.

 

And then I took it all over to Home Depot.  The girl jumped all over the flash drive idea.  Saved her a lot of work.  I even explained which options to choose when she sent it to the printer.  Not that it helped much.  She still turned it upside down and had to rerun the sample copy four times.  But she finally got it and I approved.  Then she asked how many copies I needed.  500.  You would have thought I threatened to run her through the automatic document feeder or something.  She immediately said, “Oh, we can’t do that many copies here in the store.  I’ll have to send this order out to our regional center.”  Curious, I asked where the regional center was.  “Somewhere just north of Austin.  Grand Prairie, I think.  Yes, that’s it.  Grand Prairie.”  Well, Grand Prairie IS north of Austin, I’ll give her that.  As she typed the order into her computer, I asked, “When did this procedure of sending big orders out get started?”  She answered, “Well, forever.  I’ve been here three years and it has always been that way.”  I calmly replied, “Well, that’s not actually true.”  She retorted, “Oh, yes, it is.  We have never done that big an order in the store.”  Boom.  Had her on the hook.  Now it was time for my ace in the hole.

 

I slowly and methodically pulled out my receipt from the last order of exactly the same thing – 500 booklets.  It was made two years ago, since the sunrise service was Covid-ized last year.  I mentioned the existence of said receipt and she was a bit reticent to believe me.  But there it was.  She asked if she could see it.  Sure enough.  In store.  This store.  She stumbled a bit in her protestations of policy after that, but continued to enter data into her computer.  Then she suddenly stopped.  And what she said next was … interesting.  “It seems that the computer is not letting me send the order to regional.  It looks like we’ll have to do it in the store.”  Well, imagine that.  She continued, “Maybe that’s why they did it this way two years ago.”  Maybe.  She asked to see the receipt again, and used it to write up the order.  Step one accomplished.

 

Then she got to the money part.  The initial cost was way too exorbitant.  But she assured me it would come way down.  First she took off taxes.  Then she did something else that dropped the total by almost half.  Finally, I handed her the coupon I had for 20% off all print services.  More excess fat trimmed.  The final total now was certainly more manageable.  Next came the promise of delivery date.  She knew it was for Easter. So she first said the day before.  I knew better than that, so I negotiated for two days before Easter in case something was amiss.  She finally agreed.  I left the flash drive and continued on my way.

 

Yesterday afternoon, as I worked on our round crossword puzzle some more, my phone rang.  It was a Galveston number, but not one I recognized.  On a whim, I decided to answer.  The voice on the other end said, “Mr. Vaughan? This is Office Depot.”  Uh oh.  What now?  She continued, “Coincidentally, your order is ready.”  Wait.  What?  I asked, “The whole 500 copies?”  She assured me that it was.  Not sent to Grand Prairie just north of Austin, mind you.  All done in one store in around two hours.  Amazing.  Nay, miraculous.  And even more miraculous?  When I picked them up, they were done correctly.  Of course I was more stunned than I thought.  I forgot to pick up the flash drive.  I guess I’ll be making a quick trip over to Miracle Central (a.k.a Office Depot) today.

 

Jeremiah 17:7 says, “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.”

 

Father, thank you for the small miracle that happen every day.  Forgive us when we don’t recognize them as such.  And please begin now to prepare people for the sunrise service.  Amen.