Vinay Menon: British man accidentally orders 60 pairs of reading glasses and I’m focusing blame on online shopping

While online shopping for glasses, always wear your glasses.

Or you may end up like Tom Arnold. I am not referring to the American actor and ex-husband of Roseanne Barr. No, this Tom Arnold is British. Or as the BBC framed the cautionary tale: “A man who mistakenly ordered 60 pairs of glasses has conceded he may not have been wearing his spectacles when he placed the order.”

Oh boy. This is why lion tamers always double check for whips and stools.

A photo shared by Mr. Arnold’s son racked up more than two million views on Twitter this week. Dad is flopped on the couch next to a stack of boxes. He looks like a regional manager for LensCrafters. There are villages with fewer corrective lenses.

Arnold is staring at his phone, finger to lips, with a quizzical expression.

He resembles Rodin’s “The Thinker” in a sweatshirt. I don’t know what he’s doing. But hopefully he’s not buying gold bullion. Or he may soon be forced into bankruptcy protection. Who knows, maybe his phone is off and he can’t even tell? Then he mistakes the crystal to his right as a friendly meerkat before preparing a delightful supper of bangers and mash that is actually a rolled-up sock and dryer lint?

As Arnold told the BBC: “My wife and I often lose our reading glasses, so we buy a few and just leave them around the house and I accidentally clicked on 12 sets of five, so that was 60.” At least his math is not far-sighted.

Reading glasses are fascinating when you’re not wearing them. When he was with the Leafs, I had dinner with Brian Burke one night. We were at Canoe with our wives. He forgot his specs. But Canoe had a communal box of mostly feminine reading glasses the server kindly fetched so Brian could read the menu. I won’t lie to you. He suddenly looked like one of the Golden Girls. But at least he drafted the right entrée.

In this context, my heart goes out to British Tom Arnold, and not just because I’m practically legally blind. I do not blame him for wondering why the box of glasses delivered to his front door had the proportions of a mattress. I blame online shopping.

Back in the day, when retail was confined to bricks-and-mortar, it was impossible to accidentally buy 222 toasters, as happened to a Nova Scotia woman two years ago. You never drove home from Canadian Tire and popped open your trunk, only to be astonished by the inexplicable presence of 400 ratchet sets.

What the hell! I only bought a screwdriver!

When you shop in person, you only need to trust yourself. When you shop online, it is a hazardous minefield of trust everyone. I now wonder if fulfilment centres are staffed exclusively by saboteurs. The mistakes keep multiplying each year.

I ordered a pair of brogues a while back. The box that arrived contained one shoe. Seriously. When I called customer service, the rep sounded suspicious, like I was trying to pull a fast one. I had to go into full riot act: “Madam, do you really think I’m trying to refund one left shoe and my cunning plan is to hop around town on my right foot?”

Then there is the issue of deceptive descriptions.

BuzzFeed once compiled a gallery of “Online Shopping Fails.” This included a woman who purchased a “face mask” only to receive a black gelatinous splotch too tiny for a kitten. She stuck this miniature Batman on her forehead and frowned with buyer’s remorse. Another person ordered a cast-iron skillet — it was the size of a key-chain.

On the other dimensional end, one parent ordered a teddy bear that, upon unpacking, was taller than Shaq. That should help with sleep training. There was the lass who, eager to tidy, accidentally bought a dustpan bigger than a hockey net.

Online shopping via mobile also runs the risk of digital snafus.

Bored Panda once told the tale of a cake that was supposed to be topped with a “blond girl” figurine. Alas, autocorrect flipped this to “blind girl.” So the baker sent a sugary slab topped with a spooky figurine of a child holding a white cane.

I feel for you, British Tom Arnold. I do. When it comes to online shopping, we need more fail safes and less fine print. Now that artificial intelligence is back in the news, maybe retailers should add advanced systems into all point-of-sale transactions so that when someone like British Tom Arnold is inputting purchase details, a skeptical voice will thunder: “HEY! STEVIE WONDER! DO YOU HAVE 120 EYEBALLS? ARE YOU SURE YOU REALLY WANT TO ORDER 60 PAIRS OF READING GLASSES?”

When shopping in person, the guiding principle was once caveat emptor. Now buyer beware has morphed into clicker beware. And don’t get me started on the spike in deliveries to the wrong address. British Tom Arnold should donate his surplus glasses to courier drivers. Or the lax marketers who write blurbs for Amazon.

I’m pretty sure that pillow is not 80 feet wide.

Online shopping is a wonderful convenience increasingly fraught with screw-ups.

You don’t need glasses to see this.

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