I'm sorry, Big Agnes

I found a store-wide discount at an outdoor brand's shop that made really high tech stuff. I told my spouse and she said "the kids really want to get into backpacking but all we have is heavy, thick car camping stuff, or old REI backpacking stuff from the 1990s. We should use that code to get them some light bags and tents and sleeping pads for xmas."

So I order up 5 things: a tent, a vestibule/footprint, two sleeping bags and a sleeping pad. After a week, I get a shipment notification that everything is in the mail but then one small box, about the size of two shoe boxes shows up.

The side of the box has printing that says 1 (NAME OF TENT I ORDERED) on it so I'm like cool, I'll just wait out the other stuff, you know supply chains and all. Two more weeks go by and I start to get nervous so I email the company saying, hey man, I just got one tent in the mail, where are my four other things? I'd really like to get this stuff in time for xmas.

They email back: dude, we checked with the warehouse packers, and we checked in operations and we double-checked everything in the entire chain of command, and we're positive we sent you five things. And I go "in one box?!" and they say I should start a claim at Fedex, because that's really weird it didn't get to me, everything on their end looks right. I tell them that's nuts and this has never happened to me in 25 years of online purchases where four boxes were somehow lost in the mail.

My fedex tracking has a photo of the box on my doorstep, so I send that and call them up and we're on the phone trying to get to the bottom of it and eventually, I'm like dude, I told you ten times I only got one box, but if you're actually asking me to open the box right now, I'll go into the xmas present hiding place and open the fucking box.

I cradle the phone in the crook of my neck, grab a box cutter, slice open the tape, and see five backpacking things inside the box, everything I ordered.

I start apologizing profusely, I tell the guy I stopped ultralight backpacking over 20 years ago and everything I own is for car camping in absolute comfort. My camping sleeping pad alone completely rolled up is bigger than this box in every dimension.

This stuff is climbing Mt. Everest shit. The sleeping bags in their stuff sacks are about the size of a 16oz plastic bottle of coke. I literally forgot how fucking tiny ultralight backpack stuff was.

It's then that I hear some cheering in the room getting picked up on his phone mic. I think some people were pulling their hair out all week over my insane complaints.