Flowers, Flowers Everywhere

I met up with Justin at his new office on the Plaza this Friday to set up a bank account, and remarked on a gorgeous display of yellow roses that was sitting in the middle of all the administrators' desks. Everyone looked a little suspicious/guilty and when I asked who the roses were for, I didn't get an immediate answer. Now suspicious myself, I finally managed to get the story out of Justin. As it turned out, one of the wealth advisors in his office had devised a brilliant plan to cost-efficiently celebrate Valentine's Day (they work for a bank, after all - times are tough!). He had noticed that Costco offered delivery of 100 roses for the same price that most poor schmucks shell out for a mere dozen on Feb. 14th. His proposal, to Justin and two other guys in the office: order the roses to be delivered to the office on the 13th, split the cost, and each take home a cool 25 a piece, with no wife or girlfriend the wiser!

But Costco got the dates wrong and the roses showed up on the 3rd, not the 13th. Not wanting to "spoil the surprise" (or, as I suspected, get caught red-handed in their very unromantic of schemes), all 4 decided to keep the roses in the office - 25 were arranged in the aforementioned display, and the remaining 75 ended up being placed uncerimoniously in garbage cans filled with water. Costco apologized profusely for the mistake and promised to deliver another order on the correct date. So it would have gone off without a hitch had I not showed up at the office on Friday, but, I figured, why waste 75 perfectly good roses? 25 are now sitting on my dining room table where they will remain until the next batch arrives on the 14th.

You may wonder why the roses are yellow - the color of "friendship" and not the traditional Valentine's Day red. The same colleague who came up with the plan is the only unmarried one of the four co-conspirators, and, having only been dating his current girlfriend for a few months, insisted on yellow so as not to inadvertently send the "wrong message." Since no one else felt like dealing with the customer service department at Costco - yellow won out!