It began with a packing slip.

Under shipping method it said: Sendy.

I did not know Sendy, but according to René it was an excellent name for a transport service. He was right. Sendy sounds as if nothing could possibly go wrong.

Sendy. We will bring it.

Only the packing slip said that one book was missing. A single copy would follow later. It seemed simple. Open the outstanding-orders file, find the title and done.

Almost.

The title matched, but the EAN did not.

That is how alert you have to be, even on a Friday. A title may look the same, but a different number means a different book. Perhaps a new edition, perhaps an old item, perhaps simply something that once took a wrong administrative turn.

So do not enter it. Look first, then link.

A colleague in Heerenveen first had to tell us what had actually arrived by the Sendy method. Meanwhile, another colleague investigated matters with the publisher. He once had a hundred tickets open at the same time, so one lost book no longer frightens him. Besides, his holiday began after today. Naturally, you want to solve a mystery like that before closing the door behind you.

Not much later, the answer arrived.

A mistake at the publisher. The correct book would follow.

Done.

At least, that part of the story.

Because in the meantime, South African melktertjies had appeared on the table. Homemade, presumably by someone who bakes better than the person who had brought them. With cinnamon, vanilla custard and tiny South African flags.

I think the investigator had two.

Or, well… two flags were visible, at any rate. The same rule applies here: only after a physical count may anything be recorded definitively.

And so it became a fine Friday after all. The correct EAN came later, the wrong one was not casually linked, and the melktertjies were excellent. Even Dennis kept working as if it were Friday, after earlier believing it was Thursday.

Then Sendy came up again.

If Sendy brings something, who sorts it out when things go wrong?

Mendy, perhaps.

And if Mendy cannot solve it either?

Call Wendy. Wendy weet van wanten—Wendy knows her stuff.

We had to be careful there. In Dutch, Wendy and wanten immediately brought back memories of a television programme I naturally never watched when I was younger.

The PinUp Club.

Lots of nature.

And so, on an ordinary Friday before noon, I travelled from a packing slip to an incorrect EAN, from a South African pastry to two little flags, and finally from Sendy to Wendy.

You could not make up a story like this.

You only have to look slowly enough while it happens.