Hot time in the country... and some minor complaints -- an ordinary day with peanuts?

[kinzel]

Not hot like we had it in Baltimore when we were running a multi-acre blacktopped storage facility with metal roofing... and we'd get a quart of fountain soda for each tour of the lot and need something to drink when we came in, with microsystem airtemps sometimes in the 115-130F range...but warm for Maine. I *do* miss being at the ocean.

Other things go forth: Part of what I've done today is webitize a nice snippet from Buffalogenesis which means you're all at liberty read the snippet and then use the handy-dandy link at the bottom to order yours today...

And now a few complaints

Someone somewhere has decided that in order to keep customers businesses must have a certain amount of personal contact in a year. For example, the auto-supply place we usually deal with now has a policy of calling a day or two after service to ask "was your experience satisfactory?" To which I finally answered "Give me your boss... and then read the riot act about how they'd know if I wasn't happy... and I wasn't happy about having my day interrupted to answer spam phone calls. I am now on a special "do not call" list there.

Now a financial institution I have a loan with has taken to calling to "thank you for your payment."

So today they called while I was eating lunch. To thank me for making a payment. While gollygee George, I make a payment every month. I have made a payment every month for more months and years than I care to think about. On time every month....

And so I interrupted whatever invitation they were offering -- I think it was to stop by the new office and have a glass of ice tea and some chocolate cookies in honor and celebration of my having made my payment -- and explained that I found phone calls thanking me for sending my check to be obnoxious and akin to patting a dog on the head for sitting when required to do so. And since that's what I had to say to them with lunch on the table, I then hung up.

I bet the person who came up with the "personal phone calls keep customers" doesn't answer his own phone.

I also am still put off by people asking for my "cell number"...it dates me, I know, but I feel like I need to answer "Block 12, Cell 4, Thomaston State Detention Center..."

Continuing with a theme...I can't understand why I still get broadcast email from organizations... email that lets me go into the headers and collect the names and email address of hundreds of their members. I mean, I mean, I mean, this is a new century. have you not heard about security? Privacy? Spam?

Meanwhile, have you heard the "sweet pop girl band" version of an old favorite lately? I did...I nearly choked on the phrase "paranoia strikes deep" backed by a kind of sultry-sweet girlish doo-wop harmony.

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it dates you. They closed that Thomaston brig last year...

(No, I don't have a cell phone, either. I hate phones. Inherently rude...)

*Breaks off Canned Rant #41*

An ordinary day with peanuts?

[kimuro.livejournal.com]

I use this phrase to express a day with unexpected graces and no snags - one that goes smoothly without grief. How odd to see it used so differently.

Re: An ordinary day with peanuts?

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

I dunno... I thought Shirley Jackson covered both ides, hey?

Re: An ordinary day with peanuts?

[kimuro.livejournal.com]

Oh aye, that she did. But remember at the end, the other said that he was tired of being nasty and wanted the peanuts on the morrow?

Mostly, I'm just pleased to see one of my tag phrases used by someone else. I tend to get some odd looks when I say something of that sort.

[magda-vogelsang.livejournal.com]

I have a cell phone, but it's turned off unless I need to use it for some urgent reason. And I hate getting phone call from people I do business with too, so I usually let the machine get them (caller ID is a good thing).

What's gotten even more annoying on occassion is that the person who had my phone number before me apparently has debt collectors after her. Periodically the debts are sold and I get another rash of calls looking for her--occasionally from someone who refuses to believe that I've been the only person at this phone number for nearly 3 years now, and that I don't live at the same address as the person who used to have the number or have a clue who she is or where she is now. One of them even claimed to have talked to her at my number a week earlier. Not unless my parrot escaped from his cage, answered the phone, and impersonated her.

Music-wise, I'm still trying to forget Madonna's upbeat version of American Pie.

[sokmunky.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, have you heard the "sweet pop girl band" version of an old favorite lately? I did...I nearly choked on the phrase "paranoia strikes deep" backed by a kind of sultry-sweet girlish doo-wop harmony.

So... who performs this car-wreck? I don't listen to the radio as much as I should apparently.

S.

[barsukthom.livejournal.com]

What shocked me was hearing "Gangsta Paradise" as Muzak in the "Biggest Mall in the US of A."

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

I didn't get the performer/group's name, I think I heard it in "del Sol" and when I asked the store's owner where they got their music she explaiend that the company sent them new CDs periodically, to keep them on top of what the target audience listens to...