The $500 checkbox and meritrust jerks

Rant warning. 

I try to avoid ranting too much, but, well, this has been the big issue dominating the week.

 

As I’ve mentioned before, the credit union where I’ve had my primary checking account for the last 7 years is really lacking in the customer service skills. To the point where they can’t even let you make a deposit in cash unless you have exact change, or have them make change for you first as a separate transaction. 

I probably should have gotten my clue then and walked away. But I didn’t. 

 

So late last month, I messed up. 

On my electric bill, when paying online, they have my checking account info saved, so it defaults to paying through the bank. I have to check a box to change it to pay through my unemployment account, or make a transfer from my unemployment to my checking. 

I forgot to do so. Entirely my fault. 

 

So, the bounced check fee at meritrust is 32, the electric company charges 30. $62 for a mistake makes for an expensive mistake, particularly when unemployed, but it was my mistake, so I expected to be paying it.

 

If only that was the end of the story.

As of currently, the fees stand at $478! (And that’s without them letting the payment go through.) And, they keep adding up, sometimes by $100 per day!

And there is nothing I can do to stop them. 

 

At first, I assumed that the electric company was the one putting it through repeatedly, as the bank does not list what company the refused transaction is from. So I dealt with them, paid the bill and their fee at one of their payment centers in cash as required, and thought all was taken care of. 

But the fees kept coming. So I called meritrust. And got told really that there wasn’t anything they could do about it. 

At this time, the fee was about 130 or so. So I basically sighed, figured it was over, and tried to figure out how to budget around it.

 

Then the letters came. More of them. The fees hadn’t stopped, even though the electric company had been taken care of. 

The next day a statement finally showed up… the first time I’d gotten to see anything but that it was an NSF fee. As it turned out, there were 3 transactions with my debit card that were pending still and not through yet before the electric bill hit. 

One for 22, one for 15, and one for 3.17 cents to kinkos for resumes.

None of which got paid, and all of which keep getting put through again and again and again and again with the electric one.

 

So instead of 3.17 plus 32 for resumes, its well over 103.

So I went into meritrust in person. 

The first guy couldn’t get my account to come up on his computer.

Next lady had to call someone. Then get transfered to someone else. And to a third person.

 

Third person wanted to talk to me. So she tells me that because I originally approved the transactions, they are federally regulated, and they aren’t allowed to block them from coming through.

So I asked if there was any way to block the fees. Even if they have to let them come through, its still their bank who is charging me 500 in fees when it does. (None of the transactions were paid, the balance is pure fees, plus they pulled out the money from my savings.)

 

Her response was that the only thing they could do would be to close the checking account, and create a new one. Which I was fine with. 

But there was a catch… she could only close the account if I paid the fees in full. 

Gee, yeah…. every unemployed person has more than twice their check amount sitting around at home to deposit. 

So I point blank asked how she could work with me on it. And she said she could cut them down to 200 if I were to make a payment to show an effort to pay, and could get her supervisor to sign off on changing the account with that. I agreed. She got my cell number, and told me she would call me back after it was completed.

So I made a 30 payment, as I only had 37 on my unemployment account at the time. And I’m less than a mile from the credit union when she calls back to tell me that her supervisor decided not to approve, but that maybe I could take out a loan for the amount. I pointed out that without a job currently, there was little chance of my being approved, and was told to find a cosigner.

 

Now when my stepdad had a car loan with them, it was for 24.6%! So high he refinanced through someone else almost immediately. 

So basically, if I give them 500 in profit, plus interest on 500 for however long, they will do me the favor of not continuing to charge fee on top of fee on top of fee for their debit card continuing to put the transactions through, and open a new account for me. As if I’m going to want to still do business with them after that?

I’m thinking they probably programmed their cards to create this setup intentionally.

 

But, basically, to me it means that instead of them getting 230 in profits and keeping a 7 year customer, they will get just the 30, the extra pain of trying to collect after they have finally given up and closed my account anyway for being so far in the red, and I’ve applied for a new local account elsewhere and will make sure to tell anyone I know who is considering using meritrust about my experiences.

 

I’ve got medical bills on my credit report anyway so it’s not like it hurts me much to have worse credit. And if/when they decide to sue, the judge really can’t be any worse about it than meritrust is being currently. And considering I have documentation that the electric bill had been paid before some of the retries, and that I’ve tried to close the account and been refused, I’m thinking there’s probably more of a shot of working with me than meritrust.

 

Yes, I made the original mistake. But $500 for a single checkbox being missed? And still growing every day? 

Gotta love companies who are jerks.

Goodbye Sarah, and her syndrome, and facebook

I suppose this story starts best in junior high. 7th grade more specifically.

Our local Christian radio show broadcasted a nationwide call in talk show for teens on Sunday nights. One Sunday I got through, and got to talk to a certain musician… made a dork of myself, and that’s how Sarah noticed me.

Because they gave hometowns and first names. And I lived in a really small town. So it was fairly obvious. Which mostly just caused teasing and annoyance from those who had heard me make a dork of myself.

 

Sarah however thought it was cool… and started talking to me, where we had never really had any sort of connection or reason to pay attention to each other previously.

Nobody in my normal circle of friends was a Christian at this point. Nobody in the Christian circle in my school wanted much to do with me. Nobody in the church I went to had any interest in Christian music. Sarah was really into Christian music, but wasn’t in any of the bible studies or Christian groups as the school, so at the time I hadn’t even realized that she was a Christian.

But… we clicked. We spent hours and hours on the phone… talked to each other almost every night. We had different interests in bands, but still knew each other’s music interests when nobody else seemed to know what either of us were talking about, and wasn’t tired of hearing about them. She was friends with one of the staff at the radio station, and I was friends with another (or he was tolerant and bored enough to put up with me.)

With my best friend having decided the year before to live with her dad across the country (with good reasons), Sarah stepped in pretty easily as the one I connected to the most for the remaining half of the school year, and through 8th and 9th grade, and off and on for the next year attending different high schools.

 

But only on the phone. 

I didn’t notice this at first. It seriously took me probably a good year to notice. We didn’t have many classes together, she lived in town while I lived a few miles outside of it, so it didn’t really set off any notice at first.

Her sister was a year or two younger, and had never seemed to like me talking to Sarah on the phone at all, which I assumed to just be a sibling thing… so I didn’t think a whole lot about the fact that even though we were both going to the same concerts, we never went together or even spoke to each other at them, because she had her sister with her.

 

But I still remember the day that I noticed.

I don’t even remember what was so important, but there was something I wanted to tell her about that related to the previous night’s conversation. And I knew that her first period class was near where mine was, and managed to catch her in the hall between homeroom and my class. She was standing with some other kids when I came up and told her.

And she pretended she didn’t know what I was talking about… brushed me off, then left the group to almost run to her class.

 

I was stunned. I mean, I knew I was far from popular, and didn’t really care for the most part. I was a nerd, the librarians loved me, teachers liked me and bent rules to let me mess around with computers and such I wasn’t technically supposed to… I was the overweight girl who had no real shot at being popular and didn’t care to try to be.

But Sarah wasn’t a nerd, though she was a bit overweight. She did worry about things like makeup and clothes, and hung out on weekends at the mall with her sister.

But in all the hours of conversations, the differences had never once become an issue.

 

However that night, the topic I had mentioned to her in the hall was the start of the conversation on the phone, which went on as if nothing had happened for its usual hours of chatting.

And it always did. The hall incident never once came up.

With all the issues I had with family relationships and the small cluster of people who were my friends, I never said a word about it. I valued the connection over the phone to much to risk injuring it, especially now that I realized it was threatened.

I sometimes smiled or whatnot when we passed in the halls, but I let her be. I didn’t bother her when other people were around, or even talk to her… as now I realized that even before that time I’d been missing cues that she wanted to cut hall conversations short previously.

The next year, we had a class together, and she did actually sit near me… the next row over and a couple places behind, close enough she could communicate with me if she wanted to beforehand, or ignore me as she chose.

 

The one time we ever hung out together in person was the summer after our sophomore years at different schools. Our conversations had lessened in frequency a bit during the year, but were still several nights a week. But we were both bored, and I was going on a bike ride, and she decided she wanted to come along. (We both moved to the bigger city in the meantime, not far apart, but hadn’t seen each other in person in over a year). So I rode the few miles to a spot near her house where she met me.

She almost immediately suggested we go to the house of the dj I knew. I knew where he lived, but had never gone there, or even thought about it really. But it was only about a mile away, so we went. And he was decent enough to the two random teens showing up at his door unexpectedly… invited us in for a few minutes to chat.

Afterwards, Sarah was no longer interested in the bike ride, after having ridden only the one mile to get there. Or in hanging out to do anything else.

She’d mentioned before she’d thought he was cute… but thinking about it that evening I began to wonder if there was more crush to it than I thought. And maybe less to our friendship.

Gradually the calls phased mostly out, then she found out she was moving to another state. She never returned my letters to her new address.

————————————————————————-

 

In working through other issues, Sarah has come up a few times. Mostly as evidence of the prior issues showing themselves in my response and acceptance of the situation, normally not even being a big mention.

But the more life goes on, the more I start seeing damage from the situation itself. Obviously the self esteem takes a hit… but the trust is actually the one I run into more frequently.

How much do I trust that my friends really are my friends? That they don’t just put up with me to my face and roll their eyes at me behind my back? More than one boyfriend has taken heat over a suspected Sarah syndrome that probably was entirely in my head… and I find that suspicion creeping in as a rather frequent tactic to push myself away from otherwise seemingly stable friendships.

 

Fighting it with logic usually fails. Logic will find some tiny little frustration they have with me and base a whole mountain over that molehill. 

Mostly its something I just have to catch, and to make a deliberate decision to ignore. Because I know that it isn’t normal relationship flow, isn’t logical, and isn’t likely.

And because, when it comes down to it, I have considered it, and I’d much rather be naive and be taken for a fool than to over-react to every small indication that I’m being one. Not that I want to be taken for a fool… but the consequences of being a fool a few times that could have been prevented are less than the consequences of pushing everyone away in the name of avoiding pain that might come from those few cases.

But it’s still much easier said than lived sometimes.

 

 

One of my favorite CS Lewis books, that I really didn’t expect to like all that much, is called The Four Loves. I have found myself understanding more about relationships of all sorts through that book than I ever would have imagined.

And one of the things that I got from there was the idea of friendship as being based on a common interest shared by a subset of a group. Golfers at a workplace for example. And the friendship level of things relying on that shared interest as the friends are together focused at that interest itself rather than at each other. (VERY loose paraphrasing..)

A lot of my drifting friendships have so much more easily been accepted and explained by that… as either the shared interest is lost, or the shared group to be a subset off of is no longer shared.

But I think Sarah is probably the one where it helped the most to have an explanation.

I’ve chosen to believe that she was actually my friend, and did actually care. Partially on evidence of other areas of trust such as telling me about cutting (something I’d not understand for many more years)… partially on understanding of pressures to fit in and wanting to be in the popular crowd… and partially just on the fact that it makes me feel better to do so.

—————————————————

 

I was on facebook the other day when I noticed one of my friends was friends with one of Sarah’s old friends. I clicked through to his list, and saw she was on it.

I clicked through to view her list, and saw a lot of her old popular friends, and old crushes. The guy she actually prayed about that he’d get divorced, and I found myself wondering years later when I later heard that he had. Bands she had been obsessed with back then. That dj we visited, who has gone after his dreams and made it big, gone national in what he wanted to do, and who I wonder a bit whether he’d think we were his first fan club or his first stalkers.

I flipped over to my family-related account, which gives my name, and sent an add request for her. (Against my better judgement.) Which she accepted the next day.

I flipped through her page. She’s married, no kids. Lives in completely different part of the country. Sister and sister’s kid are still in almost all of her pics.

I tried to compose a message to her about ten different times, and failed. I’m not really sure what to say. 

 

Then this afternoon, I was adding some people, and decided to make lists to sort out who was who. And as I made the school friends list, I noticed. She was gone.

Even all these years later, it still made me want to cry a bit. Even after the rounds of healing that have taken place since then, it still made me feel lonely and rejected.

I looked for answers. I flipped over to my main page… what had I done in the last few days that might have made her annoyed? I’d only changed my status twice… I’d uploaded some kid pics I had on my other account but not this one, maybe she’s sensitive about the fact she doesn’t have kids? One of them was kiddo with MWS backstage pass on, maybe she thinks I’m an obsessed freak? 

The last one brought me back a bit. As much of an obsessed freak as she was with one particular band when younger, no stone throwing room there even if she did think so. Maybe she’s still overly pressured by her sister and overly concerned with what other people think of who she associates with. 

Or of course, maybe she really never did care in the first place and was all about the fact that I would listen and had a few radio connections.

Or maybe she didn’t know what to say any more than I did.

 

I’ve thought about sending her messages all evening. 

“Ok, I guess that answers my question of what you really felt” is the one that’s been the most tempting.

But I know that’s not anything that would ever lead to anything good coming from it.

 

But it’s still really bugging me.

 

And I can’t tell if its just soreness from the old wounds being poked at again, or if it’s something I should pursue further in the name of healing and closure. For either of us for that matter.

It was so much easier way back then to just write her off as a social wimp pressured by a quest for acceptance and approval and feel sorry for her.

Cheese and the dork

Just a random fastfood service rant… ignore away. lol!

 

So my mother sends me to pick up arby’s for everyone who was at her house. Namely, a simple order with large numbers of only 3 items, but an order filling 4 bags and nearly $40. 

I give the cashier the order. Food is prepared, and correctly even. 

And then he notices that he forgot to charge for cheese sauce on one of the groups of 5 for 595 sandwiches. The sandwiches have the cheese on them…. the 1.25 charge for adding it to them just wasn’t in the total.

So he has to call the manager over. Because he can’t just sell the cheese upgrade on its own, because it isn’t an option. 

So what does manager do?

3 minutes later he comes up with two options that they can add on that cost 1.35 together and charges me for those and makes me wait the 3 more minutes or so it takes to run the card through their system again to charge me for just the cheese sauce. 

So I ended up paying more and standing around for more than 5 minutes waiting on them, just to fix their own mistake. 

Ya know, considering the size of the order I’d just given them, and that it was something less than precise and packaged like cheese sauce, I really would have thought the better customer service option would have been to let the 1.25 go as their own mistake rather than making it into a major pain for all involved. 

I guess I just wonder sometimes what the point is with some people. Yes, the price is the price… but is it really worth it to make people annoyed with your business over something so trivial that wasn’t caused by their mistake but yours?

Whatever. I’m not the type that will vow off every eating there again. 

But you can be sure it will be come into my thoughts when arby’s is suggested as a possible choice in the near future. Is that the impression you want in your customer’s thoughts when they are deciding which restaurant of the 15 or so in a mile radius to purchase their $40 worth of food?

Of drama and shoes

Sometimes I want to scream. 

I usually don’t, which probably hurts me worse than the screaming would… so maybe I should. 

 

The latest drama? Shoes.

 

Back at the start of the school year, I bought kiddo some new shoes for gym days. 

So, since she didn’t get to start to wear them until the start of the school year, they are at most 5 months old. However, they had a shiny surface in some areas, and in places like the straps the shiny is starting to wear off.

 

So, about 6 weeks ago, my mother in one of her shopping fits bought kiddo some new high school musical shoes, and declared that these older shoes were now unfit for being worn to school.

Ok… whatever. 

 

Now, granted, these aren’t in pristine condition, but they are completely normal kid footwear. Not any more beat up than the other kids. Yes, they aren’t new, but no, they aren’t falling apart. No holes, just spots where they shiny finish has worn off.

Actually, lets do better than that… here’s pics!

To me, this looks like a totally average kid shoe with 3 to 4 months of wear. I can’t say I’d be thrilled if she wore them for church, but for everyday wear on gym days, it works.

 

So fast forward about a month. This weekend, one of her new shoes went missing, the result of not being put where it was supposed to be. So… on monday, kiddo wore crocs. Brand new crocs we just bought on clearance with her dressy shoes for Christmas, never been worn before, and in colors to match her school shirts. 

Kiddo heads to mom’s house after school, and for whatever reason, I’d gone along to talk to mom about something.

Mom threw a fit about her wearing crocs in winter, and directly told her that if she wore them to school again, the state would be called and she would be taken away. 

Seriously! 

In spite of the fact that the last time they were called under very suspicious circumstances of family drama, the only issue they had at all was about the cats.

Needless to say, kiddo threw herself down on the bed crying… but mom kept up the lecture.

Now, to get the full effect, you have to realize that I was standing there, in crocs myself. Not only that, but mom’s crocs that she wears for work were right beside her desk chair, giving me the impression that she’d probably worn them that day herself.

 

Next she starts into me about kiddos bangs being too long. As of now, they are just hitting the top of her eyes. Yes, they need trimmed, again, nothing emergency critical.

I left… without even talking to her about whatever it was… because the only thing running through my mind at the moment was not a positive statement to be making in front of the kid.

 

So the next morning, kiddo still hasn’t found her shoe… but she refuses to put any shoes on… because aparently grandma has also told her she will have the state taking her away for wearing the hannah montana shoes pictured above.

I have to wonder exactly how many kids the state would have on their hands if they got called on every kid who has shoes of that quality and bangs 1/2 inch longer than ideal.

So I called grandma, which totally made her mad as she was getting ready to clock in at work, and made her tell kiddo it was ok to wear them for today… even as shes still lecturing me on how horrible they are.

 

Then after school I get more drama because grandma has told kiddo that she has to have her bangs cut after school THAT DAY or the state will get called. And of course grandma gets out of joint just as easily when they don’t look perfectly straight because I trimmed them… and most of the cheaper stores around here close about 6. This was about 5:45.

Kiddo comes home from visiting grandma that night with a bag of new socks and underwear. Kiddo has tons of socks, she just never gets them into the laundry to get them washed… so I guess the miss perfect answer isn’t to make kiddo clean her room and take care of her clothes if she wants to wear her newer socks instead of the older ones, it’s just to keep buying more of them.

 

I found kiddo’s shoe last night, so now she can wear the “approved” shoes… which with a month or so of wear are looking almost as bad as the “awful” shoes. If I think about it tonight, I will grab a pic of them for comparison.

Edit: got shoe pics… actually I think these newer shoes look just as bad as the “awful” ones..

 

 

But I can’t help but wish I grew up in such an age. Do you know how awful our shoes usually looked? We usually got about 1 pair to last the school year… frequently meaning the soles would split, and they would be fixed up as best they could be… and several of my pairs of sneakers would even have the holes for the shoe laces rip through before replacement time.

And I want to point out the several times I messed up and wore my flipflops to t-ball practice, and even to a game once… and ended up taking them off at first base and running barefoot to second.

Where was miss wonderparent then? Where were the people threatening to have us taken away by the state for less than ideal footwear?

 

I will be so glad when we don’t live here anymore.

Banks and sense

I have two banks… one that’s only online, and a regional credit union.

You always hear about how much better local is for customer service. I’m not seeing it with this one.

So I go into my local bank today… with cash in hand, $140 in 20 dollar bills. I need to make a deposit into someone else’s account, at the same bank, because their normal scheduled transfer failed.

Normally easy enough… I give them the info, they pull up the account, and we’re good to go.

But… remember that cash? Well, the deposit I needed to make was only 126.

So they tell me that they can’t give me cash back since I’m not on that account.

This was not a check… this was cash. They can’t give me change without being on the account?

I’m sure I probably rolled my eyes as she handed the cash back to me… so that I could hand her a single 20, ask her for 5 ones in change, which she does out of the open drawer beside her without even having to key it into the computer… reorganize my bills, and hand her exact change.

Why in the world can we not use common sense and make change for me before or while processing the deposit? This seems like a really simple task for customer service purposes.

And yet, I wonder how many people she puts into the same situation don’t think to stop and make her split the bills… instead either making a deposit larger than they wanted to, or walking out.

Even the slowest of fast food chain systems usually can break a 20… or procress a transaction and hand the remainder back. But apparently I’m expecting too much out of a financial institution.

Really bad phone system

I discovered a new definition for a really bad phone system today. 

First, they sent me a letter, telling me to call, instead of giving me an option to do it by email of their website. 

So I try to call… and it takes me about 10 minutes to not get a busy signal. I take this as a sign I might get a human… nope. 

After I finally get a ring, it tosses me into a phone system. After pressing that I speak English, and that I didn’t accidentally call there when I meant to call their other automated number, it puts me into silence for about 2 minutes… without telling me it was doing so or even acknowledging that I had hit “2″ to continue.

Next I get to hit, again, that yes, I needed to speak with someone at this number, not the other number or the website, which i actually would have preferred to deal with. It warned me I might want to use the website anyway… then put me on hold for more than 12 minutes. I again falsly assumed this was a sign I’d be getting a human.

Nope. When it pulled me off hold, I got into another system to enter my soc security and such. Then hold again for a few minutes…

And then, after 18 minutes on this call to a non-toll free and non-local number, after 10 minutes of trying to get this number to even answer… it tells me that they already have several people on hold, so in order to minimize my hold time, I need to call back at a later time or use the website.

Grrrr….. 

Seems like it might have been easier on their phone system to have it answer and tell me that right off about half an hour ago! Or, like some places, let me key in a number to have the system call me back when I’m next. OR actually have an option for this on their website they keep suggesting I use.

I’m going to stop by the local office later. If the letter isn’t something they are able to pull up and deal with from there, I guess it must not have been too critical in the first place. Maybe the next letter from not dealing with it will tell me what it is that I’m not dealing with… besides their awful phone system.

Converter annoyance.

These converter boxes are beginning to annoy me, and they haven’t even arrived yet.

We don’t actually use either of the tv’s for anything except a monitor for the dvd players most of the time anyway… but I suppose its nice to have the option to watch something… so I suppose we’d probably better get them.

Coupons arrive with no problems. Now comes the fun.

I’m beginning to appreciate the fact that the cable company never gave us an option to use anything except one brand of box. Very much so actually.

Because… really… every single one of these boxes does the same thing. And there only seem to be about 4 variations on features.

Thus, every review says about the same on every box. One reviewer will insist that a box has dvd quality, another will insist it is awful. Different box, different people, and you get the same thing written about it.

And at about 50 different prices. At about 50 different in person stores and 500 different online stores.

The online sites seem to be a lot cheaper than in person. So I was leaning there.

I’ve never found myself on so many questionable store webpages in pursuit of a product.

But of course, the cheapest ones are on the no name sites. If you go to one random site you’ve never heard of, this particular box is only 6 bucks above the coupon… go to buy.com and its 20, go to amazon and its 35.

How much is it worth to me for site reliability?

How much do the low power local stations matter to me, to decide if I want to pay how much more for analog pass through… to be able to watch stations I could watch now but never do?

How much would I currently pay someone just to hand them these stupid cards and have them hand me a cheap functional box without asking me any further questions?

I suppose its nice we aren’t stuck giving one company all the advantage and such. But really… there should be a “I really don’t care, just send me something that will work on my 10 year old 15 inch tv” button to check when requesting the coupon… and they just randomly grab a box and mail it out.

 

update:

ok, i’d saved this as a draft a while back, so need to update to current.

i gave up… went to target and paid the 20 each above coupon price for the random cheapest converter box they had… which had no brand name on the box at all, but turned out to be rca boxes…. wrapped them and stuck them under the tree. 

i figured if had to buy them anyway, might as well get some gift mileage out of them while i was at it! lol

anyway, they hooked up easy enough…

one tv that already had decent reception it made a huge difference…. very clear pic now, only occasionally pixelated, and added a handful of channels. 

the other tv didn’t fare so well. it had kinda spotty reception anyway… a bit fuzzy most of the time, and some of the channels completely unwatchable in bad weather. well, now, none of the signals is strong enough to hold the channel… they all stay at mostly “no signal” black screens and occasionally pop into a brief, very jerky low signal and still unwatchable spell, then back to blackness.

i think i may invest in one of the stronger sets of bunny ears for that one and see if it helps any.

Thinking spirituality backwards

http://www.livescience.com/health/081224-brain-spirit.html

This article made me shake my head a bit. Cool finding, but the article is just a bit twisted.

 

Seriously… did we just toss the entire “correlation does not mean causation” idea out the window to fit a motive?

I guess since they are scientists, they have to look at it that it must be that the brain changes reducing the “me” focus must be what’s causing the spiritual “feeling”…. surely it couldn’t be that the spiritual might not just be a feeling and might be what would cause the changes.

 

Now think about it…. for that matter, lets even play scientist and pretend that spirituality is just a feeling.

if it had been, say, the feeling of enjoying to a certain style of music that they found to cause the same changes… would they do the same and say that the brain changes caused the feelings about the music? 

More than likily, they would assume the reverse… that the feelings about the music caused the brain changes…. and then we’d see articles and products all over trying to capitalize on that.

 

Or, with a less commercially minded scientist, we’d just get that it occurred together without saying which one caused the other, and leave readers to draw their own conclusions from that neutral, purely observational position.

The findings are interesting… but I find myself imagining how much red ink this would have come back covered in had I turned something like this in to even my most anti-religion science professors. 

 

I suppose if you worry your findings aren’t strong enough to make their own points in the direction you think they should, then you feel like you need to prop them up in that direction. 

Maybe that says more about the lack of confidence in the position truly being correct, than it does about the findings. Who needs to slant something if it clearly already says it on its own?

I hate boutique shopping

I really want to like boutique shops.

I really do. I like their unique products… I like that they are usually owned by the same person that runs them on a day to day basis.. I like that it supports the little guys financially… I like that it supports creative production of products over same ol’ mass production.

But… as much as I want to like them…. I really do hate the experience of shopping in them.

To start off with, I’m not a people person. I’m an introvert.

I much prefer to be greeted, then left alone until such time as I ask you something, or show signs of needing assistance. Pet peeves include having staff all over me telling me stories about every item in the place and how wonderful they are…. and especially where it gets to the point that I feel like I have to make excuses as to why I’m not taking said random product home with me.

Asking tons of random questions about my family and what I do for a living doesn’t rank very high either… even if you can remember how to spell my last name from the other times I’ve been here and you’ve checked to make sure I’m on the mailing list.

Really… I’m fine on my own.

Especially when I’m really only looking at one particular product I have to come to one of just a few small shops to get… and the rest of the time I’m basically just kinda looking… not at all likely to buy the other items, just kinda curious to see what they are.

There is a middle ground between the ignore the customer entirely box store, and the guilt trip the customer into buying something just because you’ve been on them so much.

 

Example from my shopping trip this week:
My purchases were:

• one webkinz tshirt (the ones that the child actually wears, not the animal) that can only be found at this one store in this town,
• one webkinz christmas ornament that can only be found in this store and one other,
• and one tiny keychain-sized working snowglobe with my daughter’s first name across it that was bought as an impulse purchase because it was only 2.50

Things offered and not purchased:

• many more webkinz most of which my child has, 
• wallets, 
• hand made jewelry for child and/or webkinz, 
• info on webkinz birthday party making beaded collars for pets to match bracelets, 
• fresh made fudge, 
• other snowglobes
• other things with childs name on them
• and probably several others that i’m forgetting.

i go to the counter, pay for my items, and an extra worker asked if i would like them gift wrapped.

i said no.

the three items were then whisked off the counter to the next counter over, where the snowglobe was wrapped in tissue paper… which was kind of expected, while commenting on “just these three little things?” and mentioning another item i might like. but then price tags were removed from all three, the other two items got tissue papered, all three were tucked into one of their classy boutique styled bags, lots of extra tissue paper got put into the top and primped to stick out all nice and pretty, and then came the ribbon…. curled around the handle to keep them closed together and made into this big fancy bow and the ends trimmed and shaped… and then handed back to me.

umm…. this is not being gift wrapped?? I’m really scared to see what would have happened if I had answered yes!

However… pretty as it was… and as appropriate as it would have been to just hand to someone… the fact is, it wasn’t at all useful to me for what I was going to use the items for.

The shirt won’t be given until Christmas… but, the ornament has a code with it that activates a tree in webkinz world that the kid can decorate. It makes no sense to keep the ornament until Christmas… sure they can use it on the real tree next year, but it means they don’t get to use their online tree at all this year.

So what do you say though? They put a lot of effort into it. And it did look nice. It just wasn’t what I needed or wanted.

Do you tip someone who essentially gift wraps something when you said no to gift wrapping? Or for that matter, do you if you did say yes and they charge you for it? I hate trying to guess these things.

I have very little skill at keeping a poker face, so I’m sure I probably was giving the two clerks a quite baffled expression… but I just said thank you very nicely, and took the bag.

Later, by sliding my hand down one of the sides I got ahold of the shirt enough to slide it out, and so decided just to leave the snowglobe in with the ornament to give to the kiddo while still in the pretty bag.. though the minute she saw the name of the place embossed on the side she knew it was webkinz related and tore into it.

 

Love boutique products. This store does have some cool items, especially in their hand made stuff.

But I have to admit… I wince when I need to go there. Hallmark is just so much less obsessive… so much less pressure in the name of friendly service.

And thus the story of why, for the pets i don’t buy online, I pay 2-5 dollars more per pet to buy them somewhere I like less but that doesn’t drive me nuts when I’m sitting there trying to remember whether or not my child owns a virtual polar bear.

just don’t get me started on the story behind the guilt purchased bottle of elderberry extract we still haven’t used from 2 years ago.

Fun or making fun….

From here…

Ya know…. it’s sometimes a very fine line between being marketed at, and being made fun of. 

I will give them the “god made you unique, just like snowflakes” theme followed by trying to sell every single thing they can come up with that has a snowflake on it. 

And I’ll give them the “happy birthday jesus” theme followed by trying to sell 4 foot tall inflatable cakes and other such birthday party items. 

And the “jingle for jesus” theme…. followed by everything unrelatedly jingle bell doing double duty from the santa section.

And I’ll even give them the cheesy inflatable manger (with or without child) for use in plays and such. And the inflatable gifts from the wise men. I suppose some churches with limited space might have an actual use for that. 

 

But the nativity set of ducks?

I’m just not sure we’re on the marketing side of that line anymore.