By Caribbean Comedian Onicia Muller
Am I the only person who regularly checks their spam folder? Sure, my spam folder is mostly fake princes, MLM scams, and lenders trying to bully me into repaying my student loans.
What? That last one isn’t spamming and I should take it seriously? Name one person you know who has paid off their student loans. That’s right, urban legend! Fake news. Never happens. Das why me fi send alla dem study finance emails ta da spam!
Anyway, I was checking my spam folder, hoping for the real Bill Gates™ to confirm that he was sending me money when I noticed an email from a law firm about a data breach at Zappos.
If you don’t know, Zappos is the place where you get shoes so cheap that after one hour of walking, the heels crumble like saltine crackers. #TrueStory
What I really wanted to know was who hacked a discounted ladies’ shoe website? All they’re gonna find are return orders for bigger sizes.
Look, we women can lie to ourselves, friends, and the DMV about our shoe size but the dogs. will. bark. if we try to squeeze a size nine foot into a size six shoe. And don’t even try to play slick by buying a heel with an open front and back. Ya toes fi betray you—hanging off the edge like Jack from Titanic clung to that door.
THERE WAS SPACE ON THE DOOR, ROSE! THERE. WAS. SPACE. ON. THE. DOOR!
But I digress.
A quick internet search confirmed the law office and lawsuit were real.
My friend once won a class action lawsuit. All they did was reply to an email agreeing to join, and a few years later, they got a check for $5,000.
Five. Thousand. Zollarz!
Joining and winning a class action lawsuit is like forgetting you had a project due, your friend offering to put your name—along with the entire class—on their homework, and the teacher saying “yup, looks good to me.”
People out here playing the lottery when they need to be checking their junk mail.
I instantly began fantasizing about my riches. Five thousand is not enough money to tell your boss to kiss your butt, but it’s enough to tell the mailman. Actually, don’t. The mail carrier is the one delivering your check. The last thing you want to do is piss them off.
The possibility of winning $5,000 for buying $20 shoes from a sketchy website was almost too wonderful to be true.
By the time I worked up the courage to respond to the email, I had noticed there was another message from the law firm. The case was resolved. Money here I come!
Read. Read. Whomp. Whomp. All we won was a 10% store discount. To claim it, I had to provide Zappos with my updated credit card information.
Shout out to the Zappos guerilla marketing team for orchestrating that data breach. Without you, I would never have given your company a second thought.
Photo by Elizabeth McQuern
Award-winning Caribbean comedian, Onicia Muller’s weekly humour column, Just Being Funny is chicken soup for the naive sceptic’s soul. You can hire her to write anything from blogs and newsletters to bathroom poetry funny greeting cards. Join her newsletter for funny stories and stand-up comedy. OniciaMuller.com
