Woman Who Ordered Poppies From Flower Company Left Howling at What Arrived

A woman who ordered an arrangement of poppies from a flower shop ahead of an important business event in San Diego was left howling with laughter at what greeted her.

Business owner Sarah Hollingsworth, who lives in Austin, Texas, has a special connection to poppies and hoped to use them to catch the eye of prospective clients at a recent trade show. She runs a baby registry platform business called Poppylist.

"There's an app you can use when you are pregnant which tells you the size of your baby," she told Newsweek. "When I first got pregnant, it told me my baby was the size of a poppy, so the name kind of stuck."

Poppies also happen to be the state flower of California, where the event was being held and where Hollingsworth is originally from. So having a flower arrangement with poppies at the center for the trade show in San Diego seemed "perfect" in her mind.

If you are looking to charm someone, flowers are a tried-and-true route to success. That's not merely an opinion; it's backed up by science. In 2005, a study published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology identified a link between flowers and life satisfaction.

Over 10 months, researchers monitored the behavioral and emotional responses of a group of test subjects receiving flowers on a regular basis. The flowers were shown to have not only an immediate impact on happiness but also a long-term mood boost while helping to establish intimate connections.

Hollingsworth said when she first made the order over the phone, everything seemed to go smoothly.

"I explained that it was poppy season and that I was looking for a bouquet of poppies with neutral flowers around them," she said. "The person on the other end of the line sounds extremely confident. I was like, 'So you have poppies?' and they said, 'Yes, we have poppies.'"

Fast-forward to the day of the event, and Hollingsworth was more than a little perplexed when she first laid eyes on the flowers that had been delivered. "There were no poppies," she said. "Then I suddenly saw there were googly eyes on the carnation hydrangeas and it hit me. I unwrapped, like, the plastic around the flowers, took a step back and was like, 'Those are two dogs.'"

In a flash, Hollingsworth realized that the flower shop had made an arrangement of puppies rather than poppies. "I could not stop laughing," she said. "I had tears in my eyes." She decided to share the mistake on TikTok, where the video has so far amassed over 2.9 million views.

But what might have been a disastrous mistake proved to be a masterstroke once the event began. "It was a perfect icebreaker," she said. "It was just the perfect way to explain our name and tell this funny story about how we ended up with these flowers."

Hollingsworth said people came over to ask about the flowers, and some even took pictures. "It was kind of perfect because it was kind of a metaphor for parenting: Things don't always go as planned, but it all works out."

It also helped calm any nerves she had going into the event. "I was so stressed and tired with preparing for this trade show," she said. "This was just the thing I needed."

She has contacted the flower shop to let it know about the mix-up but has not heard back yet. "I don't want a refund," she said. "I just want them to know that there was a mix-up but it was all OK in the end."

More than anything, Hollingsworth is content at seeing the "happy accident" bring people together online. "There's so much negativity on social media. It was nice to see people coming together to enjoy a good, wholesome laugh. No arguments, just everyone brought together by a random thing," she said.

Have you had a workplace dilemma? Let us know via life@newsweek.com. We can ask experts for advice, and your story could be featured in Newsweek.