Bad Form, Peter

Photo by Bob Coyne on Unsplash

Back when my wife was still alive and functioning, we respected products from high-end retailers like LL Bean and Lands’ End. There used to be a prestigious cache in wearing their clothes.

But sadly, nothing stays the same. COVID and the Internet have transmogrified these formerly classy businesses into money-grubbing robots. They are probably owned, now, by totally different people — even foreign conglomerates.

As Dustin Hoffman says in his role of Hook, from the movie of that name — “Bad form, Peter! Bad form.”

I just used a discount coupon to purchase a sweater from Lands’ End — first time ordering from them in maybe ten years. I have been appalled at the number of dunning emails I have received from them since, to buy more — a dozen in two days!

Bad form, Peter. Bad form.

They obviously come from a robot. No human being would be so insensitively annoying.

I know you have encountered the same thing when, like me, you have been foolish enough to waste time responding to such insults. There is nobody on the other end — no real person paid to give a damn! You are just expressing your frustration to an algorithm.

The same thing is happening to Medium. I used to be able to ask Help Desk personnel questions by email — using words just like a writer! But as Liz Emerald has reported, this is no longer the case. Now I get a form letter telling me to go onto their site and choose a topic from a drop-down menu.

But I have had experience with drop-down menus from other corporations, and none of them ever addresses the specific issue that I have. Medium says that if this doesn’t work, they have another hoop for me to jump through in trying to get a resolution. God forbid that I should be able to simply ask a question and receive an answer.

No thank you, Neverland. You are just not worth the Tinkerbelling effort. I will live without knowing. Your answers change all the time, anyway. It depends on how much pixie dust you have been using.

Bad form all around.