For Sale to Dell Computers

For sale: one coffee cup. Only $499.99. What is that, Dell? It arrived broken and won’t hold coffee? Well we offered you the Special Warrantee for only $199.99 when you bought it, good for one year, but you didn’t buy it, remember? Too-bad-so-sad, but coffee cups are made of breakable material, and you can’t just expect to get one without a chip or a crack that actually holds coffee. Duh!

But here’s what we’ll do. Since you just bought it, if you pay our special Ceramicware Fee of only $130.00 for 90 days, you can give us a two-hour window when you’ll be home sitting around doing nothing at all, ready to drop everything for hours and hours at the ring of a phone, and we will have our outsourced techs call you at their convenience—maybe within that time period, and maybe not (because we’re not real clear on your time zones)—and explain to you over the phone how to fix it. For hours and hours and hours, we will guide you through the process of taking plaster and filling in that chip. In other words, you get to pay a large amount of money to spend an enormous amount of time fixing your own coffee cup! Voila! Fixed!

It’s not, you say? You say it still leaks, and the plaster got wet and fell out? It’s probably because you used the wrong brand. For only $50 more, you can use our brand, which we highly recommend, because it’s specially made for coffee cups. If that still won’t work, it’s probably that you didn’t use enough and you will need another container. Our plaster-applicators will also be necessary for $50 more, as will our hardeners, shellacs, primers, and drop cloths. Then we’ll sell you a set of paints so that our techs can guide you through the easy-peasy process of re-painting the coffee cup design for 187 hours on the phone with someone you can’t always understand. Just be aware they’ll be a teeny bit patronizing if you are not a professional artist, and a woman to boot.

Still doesn’t work? Lucky you. Because you paid that tech fee, you can just do it all over again. And again, if necessary! And again and again and again! And if we apply the plaster using the hard blow of a hammer, we will simply tell you not to worry, insist that the powder that was once your cup is just fine, and hang up, because we know that when you call back, you will just get someone else. You see the nice thing is, we stand behind our outsourced techs…so far behind them, in fact, that you could actually say we are hiding back there! Try to find us, ha ha!  The beauty is, because we don’t have to pay them nearly what we’d have to pay American ones, we pass the abuse on to you, the customer.

Of course you could always pay your own coffee cup repair people at several hundred more if you insist on actually drinking your coffee. Not our problem! Also not our problem that you pay for 20 hours of phone minutes per month and have actually run out of minutes a week early on more than one occasion because you’ve spent that much time on the phone with us!

If, however, we are feeling especially generous, we will ship you a box complete with instructions on packing your coffee cup, and we will let you mail the cup to Timbuktu for only 7-10 business days. We like to say it that way, because it sounds so much nicer than “several weeks without a cup of coffee,” doesn’t it? We won’t ship you a new, unbroken coffee cup, of course—because you didn’t purchase the warrantee—but what we will do for you is fill the chip in ourselves with plaster and then ship it back again. And if it arrives with another few cracks and chips, oh well! Because the truth is, “we”—meaning our outsourced plaster-applying techs—can just keep this up until your coffee cup is over a year old, and then we can either sell you another outrageously-priced warrantee or act horrified that you want us to keep fixing your old, broken up coffee cup. The nerve!

Let’s toast, shall we? To our cleverness in coming up with a way to scam money by charging honest people over and over and over for a bad product that never worked right in the first place. Drink up! Except not you, because that piece-of-crap cup will never work.

Isn't this great Squidward? Just you & me together for hours and hours and hours! And then the sun'll come up, and it'll be tomorrow, and we'll still be working! It'll be just like a sleepover! Only we'll be sweaty and covered with grease! ~SpongeBob SquarePants

It Contains a Root Word for Death for a Reason

Warning: the following is true, right down to the names. It’s also very long because I actually took notes while I was on hold. I had to call my mortgage company because I had a question. It was a small question, really, but I needed to know the answer and couldn’t get it any other way.

After being passed through several voice mail options, I was routed back to the beginning. So I experimented with pressing different buttons until I got Hassad. Hassad’s entire job seemed to be to tell me that he would have to transfer me. So sorry! Please hold.

Unfortunately, the holding was more like being death-gripped, or being seized, maybe—by music that was recorded specifically to be a deterrent. A phone deterrent. I understand that handling phone calls is expensive and time consuming for companies, but sometimes you really must speak to a person.

This is not elevator music I’m talking about. I don’t mean “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” set to violin. It is aggressive, blood-pressure-pumping stuff that sounds like a really bad magic trick is about to be performed, one in which a lady might just get sawed in half, but what the heck, the audience really doesn’t care because her screams might drown out that music. Or maybe if Halloween were the kind of holiday that involved parades, this is what the band would play while floats of evil super heroes crash into buildings and mangle the mobs of onlookers. It involves random trumpets and organs and very windy wind instruments and lots and lots of cymbals. Doomp-doompa-doomp! Doompa-doompa-doompa-doomp! went the music, and then CLASH!! with the cymbals. Then a plaintive, somewhat nasally female recording came on and told me that if I would just go on their WEBSITE, I could get my answers much FASTER! Problem was, what I needed didn’t come from a website. I had to have a live human.

I would not let them win, so I pushed my phone headset away from my ears and waited. Except the sound was so obnoxious that it vibrated straight through my skull. Doomp-doompa-doomp!! REALLY, if I would just go on the WEBSITE!! …CLASH!!!

I played several games of computer Solitaire until I won. Finally I got Amy. Amy explained that the company has been sold (over a year ago) and still doesn’t have its information transferred over. Amy had no information whatsoever! So sorry! She’d put me through to someone who could answer my question, though! Hold please!

Doomp-doompa-doomp! Doompa-doompa-doompa-doomp!! …CLASH!!! The WEBSITE!…. Doompa-doompa-doomp!!!

I played—and won—a couple of games of Free Cell. By this point it was clear that the music was scientifically designed to give people headaches after prolonged exposure. Next was Manuel. Manuel sounded like he was struggling with depression. So sorry that he would have to transfer me again. Very very sorry. Was there anything else he could help me with?

I actually wondered if Manuel was forced to listen to that music. Maybe that was what was depressing him so. I figured he might be sympathetic and asked him if I could just be on hold without it. Pleeeease. I was not above begging at this point. Manuel sounded like he was almost in tears and explained that the next wait would be much shorter. So sorry.

Doomp-doompa-doomp! Doompa-doompa-doompa-doomp!!!! CLASH CLASH!!! My head throbbed. WEBSITE! More Doompa-doomp. Spider Solitaire. Won that one. Doompa-doomp some more.

After the longest wait yet, Kyle got on. Kyle couldn’t answer my question. Sorry!—I had been transferred in error! I needed to go back to the previous department, back to Manuel. Hold please!

Doomp-doompa-doomp! Doompa-doompa-doompa-doomp!!!... The WEBSITE!…. CLASH!!! CLASH!!! The pain in my head kept time with the beat.

Yet this time I did not get Manuel. I got Fay. Fay had a very distinct, high-pitched voice. Fay listened to my question and was certain I needed another department. She would transfer me.

Doompa-doompa-doomp!!!...CLASH!!!

Someone picked up a little quicker this time. It was…Fay again. Same Fay. Same accent…Philippines, maybe? Same high-pitched voice. Could she help me? Struggling between maniacal laughter and tears, I told her she had just transferred me and it must not have gone through. Fay had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. She did not remember me from 15 seconds earlier, but what was my problem? So I explained it all over again. That’s when she said it.

“Yes,” New-Old Fay said. “I believe I can answer that.”

Huh? And…HUH???

Amazingly, Fay-the-Second answered my question. It took less than a minute.

I am now convinced it’s a game, like a video game. I am writing this as living proof that it can, in fact, be beaten. If we hang on long enough and are determined enough, and if we press the right buttons and get through the various levels and battle repeated assaults from the evil music, ultimately Fay will link us to Twilight Zone Fay, Repeat-Fay, Warmed-Over Fay, Fay’s Clone Fay, the Ultimate Fay of Bizarro World, Keeper-of-the-Mortgage-Answers-Fay. The Wizard of Fay.

I imagine that somewhere at this mortgage company there is a tiny office in the Philippines where Fay sits behind a curtain, transferring people to herself, while people all over the world—Hassad and Amy and Kyle among them (but not Manuel because he’s just depressed by the whole thing)—snicker and giggle at the unsuspecting customers who attempt to make it to the Ultimate Level of Faydom without their heads exploding.

Well I made it. I did. I’d ask for a t-shirt to commemorate the occasion, but Fay would have to transfer me to sales.

If I have to pull up my big girl panties and deal with it one more time the elastic is going to break and I really will have to show my ass! ~Sign seen in Catalog Favorites