Preface
This piece records and reflects on my life from June 24 to June 30, 2024.
An unpleasant flower ordering and rights protection experience led me to ponder the relationship between merchants and consumers, as well as the phenomenon of humans becoming more AI-like while AI becomes increasingly human-like. On Friday, my server suddenly experienced a Kernel Panic and couldn’t reboot. After various roundabout rescue attempts, I finally salvaged over a thousand images from the image bed, leaving me feeling quite shaken. I took the opportunity to tinker with a new image bed solution. Realizing it had been over two years since I last wrote a blog setup tutorial, and considering the many changes in both content and components, I decided to restart the series.
An Unpleasant Flower Ordering Experience
A very unpleasant incident occurred over the weekend (which is still unresolved due to the merchant’s refusal to collect the goods).
June 30th marked the one-year anniversary of my relationship with my senior. In the morning, I ordered a bouquet of flowers through the Ele.me delivery platform. What should have been a joyous occasion turned sour when the flowers arrived at my senior’s place with an attached card that read “To my little Yu baby” along with some personal wishes. I had not requested any card to be included.
It seemed the card had been mistakenly attached. Fortunately, I was present when the flowers were delivered, preventing any misunderstandings or conflicts. Although somewhat disappointed, I wasn’t overly upset at the time and contacted the merchant for a return.
I explained the situation to the merchant, expressing my understanding that the florist might have attached the wrong card. However, since giving flowers is more about emotional value than the flowers themselves, I no longer wanted this bouquet that seemed “intended for someone else.” The merchant’s attitude, however, was quite rude.
“If it’s the wrong card, just throw it away.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong, why should I accept a return?”
“Well, you can contact customer service to protect your rights then.”
I consider myself an emotionally stable person who generally treats those around me and the world with kindness. I’ve never troubled delivery personnel delayed by bad weather, nor have I ever demanded compensation or refunds from delivery drivers for spilled food. Yet, the merchant’s attitude still angered me.
I can understand the florist’s oversight and have no complaints about the flowers themselves. What I find lamentable is that the merchant, being in the “floral art” business, should understand that those who send flowers are not just sending flowers, but conveying sentiments or expressing emotions. Her attitude made me feel that these feelings were not respected.
It seems that for this flower seller, flowers are just flowers, mass-produced artificial objects. The sender’s nervousness, the recipient’s shyness or surprise all seem irrelevant.
Of course, I understand that as a business, there are cost and revenue considerations. But this still pained the few remnants of idealism I still harbor. Without these emotional underpinnings, even the most beautiful floral art is nothing more than a pile of organic matter that will soon decay.
Merchants and Consumers
So I contacted customer service, and after some communication, I learned why the merchant was so unafraid. It turns out that on the Ele.me platform, flowers are non-returnable items. I understand that the original intention might be because flowers are handmade perishable goods that cannot be resold after return.
This reminds me of the recent controversy about consumers abusing Pinduoduo’s “refund only” mechanism to harm merchants. Isn’t this experience also an example of merchants using platform rules to harm consumers?
The AI-ification of Humans
This matter wasn’t over yet, and my conversation with Ele.me’s customer service left me even more speechless.
Me: (After describing the situation and the merchant’s attitude problem in detail again) I want to request a return, but the merchant refused.
Customer Service: So the flowers themselves are fine, right?
Me: …If you put it that way, I suppose so, but I don’t want them anymore.
Customer Service: According to our platform policy, we can’t refund fresh flowers~
Me: But it came with a card for someone else. These aren’t the flowers I wanted.
Customer Service: How about I contact the merchant to send you a new card?
Me: …
I’m still somewhat bemused by this conversation. People say that since ChatGPT came out, AI has become more and more human-like, and AGI might not be far off. But I feel that before that happens, humans are becoming more and more AI-like. It seems that for them, treating the person on the other end as a thinking, feeling human being has become a difficult task.
Sometimes I often wonder what’s wrong with people these days. Those in the business of making fresh flowers don’t treat flowers well, nor can they imagine the unpleasant emotions if they received flowers from their loved one with someone else’s name on it. Those in the business of solving user problems don’t listen properly to what users are saying, only knowing how to reply with templates.
I’m reminded of a florist I used to order from regularly when I was in Beijing. Because it was custom bouquets, they were much more expensive than those on the platform. But she would ask about my story and the emotions I wanted to express, remember our habit of putting flowers in vases, and could realize all sorts of little ideas I had about flowers. At the time, I was just impressed by the florist’s attentiveness. Now I realize that speaking properly and doing one’s job with care has become something to be coveted in today’s society.
It was a small shop, with only the owner handling everything from sourcing, flower selection, arranging, to delivery. This shop I ordered from this time is considered a popular one in Hangzhou, often topping various platform rankings with over 9,000 sales. Bad money drives out good, it’s truly sad.
Interesting Things and Objects
Bloggers
The wandering senior is back!!! Four or five years ago, I used to watch his videos all the time, and even my life direction followed the blockchain path he said he regretted not choosing at the time. I always looked up to him as a goal.
Later, he transitioned to fintech and went to Jane Street. These past few years, he’s been constantly seeking new challenges and gradually stopped updating. Now that he’s back, he talks about learning and growth, anxiety and imposter syndrome, all things that I, as someone slowly entering the workforce, have started to ponder. I still feel inspired!
Time to continue learning Rust.
Input
Although most interesting inputs are automatically synced to the “Yu’s Life” Telegram channel, I’ll still select a few to list here. It feels more like a newsletter this way.
Books
- Normal People, I really like this British TV series. The other day while reading other books, I suddenly thought of this one and decided to catch up on the original novel.
- What My Bones Know, I read about half of it last year. These past few days, thinking about family and psychological healing issues, I’ve been reading about a chapter a day.
- Atlas Shrugged, a gift from a reader. I’ve read the first two chapters.
Articles
- Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites
- The Lost Desire to Express
- A Universal Method for Displaying Native and Custom Menus in Electron and Web Environments
Videos
- A programmer’s transition to fintech for 4 years, like going to college again, not writing code anymore? | Age anxiety | Future plans | Imposter syndrome | Life updates
- vlog #62 | A female programmer’s after-work study record | Starting SwiftUI | Thoughts on time management | Reading “The Courage to Be Disliked” | Daily English learning | Hong Kong team building ๐
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