899th Friday Blog Roundup

I want to talk about really amazing customer service. Josh and I already had a lifelong addiction commitment to drinking Mayorga coffee, but this story ensured that we continue on our Cafe Cubano path into future generations.

Every six weeks or so, Josh orders several two-pound bags of coffee. After a day or two, they arrive and our house smells amazing because I leave them in the front hall until he gets home to put them in the freezer.

This week, I opened the box so the hall could start smelling like delicious ground coffee, and I could tell something was different when I picked up the bags. He hadn’t gotten the coffee ground like he normally does, and we don’t have a grinder for whole beans. We got rid of it when the kids were babies and the sound bothered them, and we never replaced it.

So we had no way of using this enormous box of coffee.

I called them to see if he could drive by and get the coffee ground — the warehouse isn’t that far from our house, and pre-COVID, we always went in person to get our beans. But the guy explained that he couldn’t run even sealed bags of beans through the machine once they left the warehouse. My heart sank. I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the window.

“But,” he said, “You could donate those bags to a local food bank, and I could send you the ones you wanted right now.”

“But it was our fault. We ordered the wrong thing,” I pointed out.

“I know, but we can make this right.”

It is such a simple thing: a solution where everyone wins EXCEPT the company. The food bank wins because they get coffee they can pass along. I win because I get the coffee I want. But poor Mayorga doesn’t win because they’re accepting the burden of making everyone else happy.

So. This is what I can do for Mayorga (beyond customer loyalty of life). If you are looking for really amazing coffee from a really amazing company that clearly cares about their customers and community and the world as a whole, please get Mayorga coffee. You will not be disappointed because it’s literally the best coffee in the world. As in the whole world. Tall claim but if you taste it, you’ll understand.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Grief Revisited” (Afterward Honesty)

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ muses on whether grief is forever. It’s a great post, pulling love apart from grief and showing how they’re two separate entities when you’re not in a space of active grief. She explains: “I honour my losses, and my pain, the grief I once felt. I do that because of love. Love outlasts grief.” It’s a beautiful post about the time after.

Scientist on the Roof talks about the pressure to be a superhuman parent. She writes: “You can’t be too permissive – that’s bad parenting. But you can’t be too strict, either (that’s bad parenting, too). You have to ‘connect,’ you have to show compassion and understanding. You have to be firm… but not too firm.” It’s not realistic, and the pressure sets up people for failure. I understand why she’s angry at all of the unsolicited advice out there.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix has a post about opening up to her classmates about infertility. She posts her research topic, unsure of how her classmates will react to talk about pronatalism and IVF statistics. But she’s surprised by the support and the outreach. “Y’all. My cohort is small. Very small. Three people, not including myself, have already been open about being affected or having someone close to them being affected by infertility and involuntary childlessness.” She is looking for one more person for her research project. “If you are a woman who is permanently involuntarily childless after IVF failure and would like to participate,” contact her.

The roundup to the Roundup: If you could marry a cup of coffee, I would be wed to Cafe Cubano. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between June 10 – 17) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week? Read the original open thread post here.