As a lover of history, I’ve always thought about the fact that I will never be featured in any history books or accounts. No one will write down my actions as important or memorable. What’s to be said about Franklin Cota on this day in history?

“Historians believed that he ate a lot of Cool Ranch Doritos and took a long nap. He did not brush the crumbs off himself before he fell asleep. He woke up and ate the crumbs and fell back asleep. He didn’t like himself after the nap.”

People from the past who were unable to get basic spices would say that I lived like a king! Napping and eating full bags of Christmas color flecked corn chips. People from the nearer past would say that I’m a gluttonous loser who ate a whole bag of chips in one sitting and fell asleep. They’re both right!

Still, for all the embarrassing I’ve done, am doing and will do, I will be blessedly forgotten. I will not be remembered as Nanni, the ancient Karen who is the first person in known history to issue a written customer complaint from 1750BCE.

But was he a Karen? Reading through the complaint, it seems that he had legitimate gripes with copper merchant Ea-Nasir. Who seems to have not delivered his copper ingots despite receiving payments and also was rude to his servant! Every good boss I’ve ever had has gone to bat for me. Nanni understands the plight of the workers underneath him.

And what he wants is pretty reasonable. He wants other his fine quality copper or his money back. He’s not demanding anyone get arrested or anything like that. He just wants Ea-Nasir to fulfill his end of the bargain.

Maybe there’s something to be said about that. He ended up in the history books because he was the first at something. It wasn’t something that we like but how would we have known about Nanni otherwise?

If you want to learn more about Nanni and Ea-Nasir’s feud, you can find it at the source of this post:

https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/complaint-tablet-to-ea-nasir-the-oldest-recorded-customer-complaint