Where the transfers are efficient but the wires are all crossed

(a): Merry Christmas! I got you something!
(b): Oh, really? After you sent me that video I wasn't expecting anything.
(a): Well you'd mentioned you were getting me something, so —
(b): — joke's on you, halfway through the video I returned your gift.
(a): Well... are you gonna open it?
(b) (slides finger under wrapping paper, carefully pulls under the tape, slightly tears the wrapping paper): Gah!
(a): You have to read the tag first!
(b): OK, it says, “To: (b).” That's me! “From... Isfahan Lake, Illinois, distribution center?”
(a): Well they pronounce it more like “iz-FAY-en Lake” in Illinois
(b): “From: iz-FAY-en Lake, Illinois,” where the men are men and the women speak flawless Persian. (tears open the rest of the paper) Alright, what's this?
(a): Heh, there's a story here...
(b): (opens box, pulls out a hideous Christmas sweater with pulsing LED lights) Aw, you... uh... shouldn't have! So let's hear this story, where did you find this thing?
(a): Amazon. Searched, “Christmas sweaters so ugly they'll take you back to 2009”
(b): Amazon... isn't that more like... (scrolls on phone) Manaus, Ohio, Fulfillment Center?
(a): Oddly enough they say it “MANN-ayz”, exactly how your dad says “mayonnaise” —
(b): — I see Illinois hasn't cornered the market on linguists or pedants —
(a): — anyway this is from a third-party seller running a niche import business from Indiana —
(b): — living in the farmlands outside the small town of Pyongyang, Indiana, which has been in decline since the grain elevator closed in the early 90s—
(a): — actually kinda near Danville —
(b): — Isn't Danville in Illinois?
(a): Near Danville. I was late getting this ordered and apparently this was a hot item so it was out of stock at the Amazon facility in Mayonnaiseville or whatever, so our seller got a text message at 5:22 AM Eastern Standard and ran out to his shed —
(b): — I know it's a week early, but you really need to make a resolution about your sleep schedule
(a): (sings) Maybe it's much too... early in the game...
(b): I'm serious!
(a): Oh, come on, it was barely past 2 out here, Indiana is just really far west in its ti—
(b): — (in mid-20th-century filmreel voice) Pyongyang, Indiana, feels almost western, despite its Eastern Standard time zone and —
(a): — He grabbed his car keys and stumbled into his boots and started the car to let it warm up and ran out to the shed and double-checked the order and grabbed this sweater and put it in a box and taped it shut and carried it to the car and spun out of his driveway on the way to the Post Office.
(b): Paint a picture for me. What's he driving? Mid '80s... Oldsmobile... Delta 88... coupe?
(a): Uh, so like... you're the one that's from the midwest... don't they have road salt there? 80s GM ain't lasting 40 years in that. He's driving a 10 year-old anonymous wedge-shaped crossover like everyone else.
(b): You're no fun! It's Christmas! Give him something good!
(a): I'll give the actual hero of the story something good.
(b): Fine. He gets to the Post Office, just in time to salute a mail carrier in a creaky Grummond LLV pulling out to do the local rounds.
(a): America!
(b): America!
(a): Right, so he sends this thing off and later that day it arrives at the big distribution center in Isfahan Lake. So, OK... all day this huge snowstorm has been threatening to start. Distribution center is out across the freeway from the town proper. So here's our hero, right? She's a manager at the distribution center, lives in town, good midwestern town, Christmas tree in the middle of Meidan Avenue. She's working second shift this day. Her mom drops in for coffee and asks if she can take her down to the bakery to get some Danish, she'd drive herself but it's a couple towns over in... umm...
(b): — Århus!
(a): Sure, in Århus. I'd tell you what crazy way they say Århus there but I don't even know how to say it, so they're probably saying it wrong the same way I am.
(b): Nooo, Århus is the little Danish town, they're getting a little Danish from the little Danish bakery, they say it exactly right!
(a): ... Sure, they say it right, however that is. And she'd drive herself but, you know, she never feels safe on Route 12, especially since they put in that driveway for Tromsø High School, one of those kids is gonna pull out without looking one of these days! And the snow might blow in! So she says OK, she has a few hours before work. They go out and get in her PT Cruiser.
(b): Our hero!
(a): Not just any PT Cruiser, a woody PT Cruiser. It was her grandpa's last car, he kept it perfectly maintained and barely drove it. Right now it's hard to see the fake wood paneling through a layer of good old Illinois road grime but it still “runs good”. His old over-glasses sunglasses are still clipped to the visor, she wears 'em when the sun is low in the sky.
(b) (makes farting noise): Ooh, look, “You're the one that's from the midwest,” “I don't want gifts, they aren't efficient” now you're laying on the sentimental shit? Get the fuck out of here!
(a): Suit yourself, over-glasses sunglasses are a solid concept. Total 360° coverage! The old man knew how to keep the glare out of his eyes! So they go down to Århus. Her mom loved Århus and hated Tromsø. For her it was the opposite; Århus was the gym where she lost every time at volleyball and Tromsø was the ice cream shop she rode her bike to when she was finally old enough to go out on her own.
(b): ... not to mention the ice cream shop she smoked and drank and threw up behind, where she met her first boyfriend. He still lives in town and she passes by his house on long runs every now and then, they wave hi and sometimes she stops and stretches for a few minutes while they talk in his yard but they know that's all in the past, just memories. So they go into the bakery in Århus and her mom is smiling and chatting with the staff and loving her little trip to little Denmark while she's shrinking back, scanning for members of the staff about her age that might look like former high-school volleyball stars?
(a): Yeah, and as they're coming home the snow really starts to come down and she's just seething to herself, “If we had got the hell out of Århus sooner I wouldn't have had to drive in this shit! If I wreck Grandpa's car it's all Mom's fault!”
(b): “... and Grandma would have been like, ‘Told you so!’” Grandma and Grandpa here are on dad's side, this Grandma had got off on the wrong foot with Mom and never quite got over it.
(a): But she sighs and puts on her hazards and crawls all the way back to The Lake, which is what the locals call it when they can't be arsed to say, “iz-FAY-en Lake”. By the time she gets home the snow is really accumulating. She drops her mom at her house and says she'll bring her car over when she gets home from work. She'll walk home through the empty streets, which she likes, makes her feel free. She pulls into her driveway, goes in her garage, grabs her shovel, clears the sidewalk in front of her house, then gets a scoopful of salt from the salt bag and sprinkles it on the steps to her porch.
(b): I see we have ourselves a civic duty enthusiast over here!
(a): Then she looks out down the block, looks at her watch, and shovels out a few of her neighbors' sidewalks. She watches the snow fall down on the freshly-shoveled sidewalk, shakes her head, runs back to the garage, throws the shovel in, closes the garage, starts the car, backs out, takes two right turns out to Route 12 to get across the freeway. But when she gets to the overpass hill the car won't get up it. This road is just like this, it's a weirdly steep climb and you just can't get up it in the snow sometimes. She has snow chains... back at the house... from a road trip to the mountains years ago, never used. She lets the car slide back down the hill, carefully turns it around, pulls into the parking lot of a Subway, sticks her head in the restaurant and says, “Hey, is it alright if I leave my car here until the weather clears?”, and the kid at the register says, “Sure thing, ma'am,” —
(b): — I don't know where you got these ideas about midwestern politeness but the 1950s were 70 years ago
(a): And she runs out from the restaurant in her snow boots, up the hill, across the interchange, and a mile down the road to the distribution center, just on time. A few hours into work she notices a package addressed to Federal Way, Washington with a ZIP code starting “89”. Well, that can't possibly be right! She double-checks it and has a new, correct address label printed.
(b): So that's the story of how my... wonderful Christmas gift got here.
(a): That's about the size of it.
(b): Thanks entirely to people that don't even have names and towns in Illinois with crazy made-up names like Isfahan Lake, Tromsø, and Danville?
(a): Homo Econonomicus says worrying about that would be an inefficient use of our precious worrying resources!