customer appreciation

This entry is a simple letter of thanks to all those that have shown me excellent customer service over the years. I felt it appropriate to dedicate a blog entry to you all for enriching my life. You should get a tissue before reading on, as the sarcasm may drip on to your keyboard.

- thank you to the folks at Costco for not accepting credit cards. Much love to these ma and pa organizations that cannot afford the monthly fees associated with providing credit card service for their customers. Keep up the good fight, one day you'll make it. i know it is tough running a small business for the first couple of years but stay strong and determined...it'll come.

- thanks to Tim's for a number of things....not providing debit card service is one. Forcing your hard working customers to dig up change every time they want a $1.50 coffee is so old school and I love it. Thanks also for totally ignoring me when i actually come in to your establishment for a purchase instead of sitting on my lazy fat ass in the drive thru for 45 minutes. I think I now know how it feels to be on the lower end of a caste system in a 3rd world country. You have made me really appreciate the country I live in. Thanks also to Tim's for taking absolutley no accountability for the dangerous traffic jams caused by your drive thrus. I try to live by the philosophy of "ignore something long enough and hopefully it'll go away". I also have found exciting and interesting ways to get to work in order to avoid the grid lock you create every morning. There's a lot of cool little streets of St. John's i never knew existed so thanks.

- hats off to the corner store on Forest Rd. for charging an extra 48 cents on my debit if the purchase is under $5. This revenue generating creativity is 2nd to none. when it comes to $, who gives a shit about customers anyway? Really.

- much obliged to the girl at McDonalds drive thru. When I bought a happy meal for my niece once and asked what the prize of the week was, and she said "look in the bag and see for yourself", that really taught me to be resourceful and get out there and live my life instead of expecting everything to come to me. Thanks McDonalds girl, i won't forget you.

- my indebtedness to City Tire for selling me four winter tires for $270, two of which had 3 inch slashes in them. I learned to drive really well that first week i had them on.... the kind of driving that feels like you are driving down a flight of stairs....all the time. Now I can tackle any kind of discomfort in a car. I can fall alseep driving on a dirt road thru the mountains of Bolivia that has just been flattened by a rock slide in 45 degree temperatures with a dozen chickens cawk cawk cawking next to me and traditional latino music on crank with guerilla fighters shooting at me thru the trees. And not responding to my letter of complaint showed me that complaint letters are usually a waste of time if the product sucks. Thanks also for the most ironic mission statement on the planet.....i won't state it verbatim but it includes such buzz words as safety, quality, committment, etc....hilarious.

- much appreciation to atlantic lotto for sucking the paychecks out of thoudsands of newfoundlanders every Friday night and then not having the decency to install quality printers and computers that can tell people if they won on saturday morning. Tough love keeps them coming back, keep up the great work.

- thanks to the realtors in our "have" province for pumping the price of real estate thru the stratosphere, (all based on fictional reasons), and preventing lower income families from ever enjoying a home of their own. Atta way to keep out the undesirables! Good on ya!

- a sincere thank you to Air Canada for keeping me on hold for 90 minutes when my dad was dying because they wanted to confirm he was on his deathbed before selling me a family tragedy discount flight home from Alberta. That was the longest 90 minutes of my life so i thank you for extending my life a little more than it would otherwise have been. Life's so short, you guys helped lengthen it for me.

- thumbs up to the hundreds of convenience stores which are nothing more than gambling dens for all the addicts in our province. Even addicts need a place to call home and you have provided that tenfold. Everyone else has to suffer thru long lineups while they scratch and scratch and scratch but since you are doing it all from the goodness of your heart....thank you for your compassion.

- thanks to Shoppers Drug Mart for having monster sales on pepsi every 3rd day. Even though the lineups extend to the back of the store so i have no chance in hell of buying a birthday card in under 2 hrs and even though the incidents of obesity, heart disease and diabetes skyrocket during these epic sales......not sure what my point is on this one, sorry.

- thanks to Capital Hyundai for giving us a loner with an empty tank. (after failing to fix a problem in my wife's car 3 times) If it wasn't for this episode, who knows...maybe she'd still be driving a shitbox.

- thanks to the cashier lady at Marie's for letting everyone know in the store that her beautiful son got off on the assault charges. What would have been just a boring stop for a bag of chips turned into a hilarious story which I shared with my family and friends. I'll be back for more gossip, my dear.

- thanks to the local radio stations for bending over and taking it up the ass from CRTC for the past 50 yrs. Just imagine if you were born in america....you'd never have had the pleasure of hearing such stellar acts as Gowan, Frozen Ghost, Renee Simard, Trooper, Gino Vanelli, Sheriff, The Box, Candi, Parachute Club, Doug and the Slugs.......fingers are getting tired, must move on. you get the point right?

- 3 cheers to all the major food corporations for charging twice as much for healthy food. That's the way it should be....only the rich should be healthy. Afterall, if the poor are healthy, they may actually feel better about themselves, get stronger, rise up and want to take back control of their country. We can't have that, can we? Keep them addicted to cheap vienna sausages and pepsi and everything will be fine.

- thank you to Sears for advertising a 32 inch HD tv for $299, taking my visa, charging it, calling me back a week later to say that it wasn't available and then expecting me to wait 60 days to get the visa charge reversed. This opened my eyes to how corporations make their budget numbers in a soft quarter. Thanks, i'll remember that creative accounting trick when I open a shitty, overpriced, messy, understaffed retail store.

- thank you to actors who have sold out for a quick paycheck...Gerard Butler, Hugh Jackman and Bradley Cooper are just a few of the quiffs who fall into this category. They started out with promising careers in quality movies but the lure of Jennifer Aniston's bed and the wonderful world of chick flicks was too much for them. These guys have taught me that making $ is far more important than taking pride in your work. Keep at it guys, you are almost in the upper echelon of legendary actors actors like Patrick Dempsey and Hugh Grant. Just one or two more pathetic films and you'll go down in history as complete tools. (you'll be rich though, so that's cool)

- thank you to the fine folks at Dominion. What do i get for being a loyal customer and showing up as soon as the place opens on Saturday morning? I get no cashier. i get to check my own groceries thru a system that doesn't work 90% of the time. As a result, i'll sleep in a bit later and go when it's crazy busy. thank you for giving me a reason to sleep my saturday morning away. i'm sure I'll feel well rested because of your cost saving measures.

- thank you to our opposition leaders, past and present. (we pay all of the politicians' handsome salaries thru our taxes so yes, it does fall under customer appreciation) You have shown me that a dream job does exist.....getting paid to do absolutely nothing but travel and criticize others' actions. These are among my very favorite things to do and getting paid for it would be sweet. I wanna be one when i grow up.

So to all the fine people above (and oh so many more which i don't have the time or inclination to mention) that have helped shape and guide me thru my life thus far...i thank you. The experiences have been unforgettable, the lessons invaluable.