Rod Serling, Eat Your Heart Out!

An Interesting Exploration of Memory

Submitted for your consideration...

Just this past Sunday, I got a panicked call from a dear friend.

"Help!" he exclaimed. "The emergency brake in my car is gone!"

"Gone? Meaning that it's not working?"

"No! It's gone! It's no longer even there! I went to go step on the emergency brake pedal while I was at the grocery and it was gone! So is the little handle you pull to release it! I was hoping that you'd tell me that you had removed it when you were working on my car recently and had forgotten to reinstall it."

"No, I didn't touch your e-brake." This is when something struck me. This friend drives a Honda. "Waitaminnit," I thought. "Hondas don't use foot-pedal e-brakes. They use handbrakes located between the seats near the shifter."

"I've had this car for 12 years and I use the e-brake all the time," he explained.  "I know that it's supposed to be there!  This is like some kind of Twilight Zone episode!"

I asked him to humor me. "Do me a favor and look next to the seat by the shifter.  Check to see if there is a lever there."

"There's no lever," he said. "I know I'm not crazy!  I've had this car for 12 years and I know where the e-brake is!"

During all this, I was using my phone to look up a picture of the interior of the same model and year of his Honda.  I found one that was one year older and it showed a picture of the e-brake being located right where I thought it should be;  between the seats and near the shifter. I was certain that Honda had not changed their design that radically in only one year.

Since he was convinced that it was supposed to be a foot pedal, I told him that I didn't know what to tell him and that my wife and I were on the way over to his house to check it out. Since I was 99.99999% certain that the e-brake was located between the seats on his car, Linda and I were a little bit worried about our friend since he had made such a significant error.

Lifting the fog

It took us about 25 minutes to get to his house from where we were.  On the way over, I asked my wife to go talk to our friend when we got there and I'd check out the car. When we arrived, Linda proceeded up the steps to the living room, and I went down to the garage.

I opened the driver side door, and his interior looked exactly like the one in the picture.  What was really interesting about it was that the parking brake was set! Yes, this means that he drove home from the grocery, thinking that his parking brake was physically gone, then when he parked the car, he subconsciously and automatically pulled the e-brake lever to set the brake!

I went back inside the house and asked my friend to come down to the car.

"Don't tell me it's there," he said, incredulously.

"Just come down to the car," I replied. We went back to the car, and I opened the driver door.  I reached in and pointed to the set parking brake. "Dude," I said in my gentlest tone, "your parking brake is located here."

"But I remember the pedal! It can't have been more that two weeks ago that I used the pedal!"

"Dude, something has gone wrong in your memory.  I think you're remembering the location of the e-brake from your last car. Your last car was a Dodge, and American-made cars still use the foot pedal design in some cars, and they were much more prevalent 12 years ago when you last drove that car."

"So I'm losing my mind," he said matter-of-factually.

"No, I think you just had a 'brain fart.' It happens to all of us from time to time."

"I'm going to have my doctor check my neurotransmitter levels," he said in a worried tone. "This is really troublesome."  I could see him getting really worried about this.

"Let's go upstairs and talk about it," I suggested.  He agreed and we went upstairs and joined Linda who was waiting there for us.

Delving into the issue

I explained to my friend that I think he just had a minor "rewriting" of some information in his brain, and that it happens to us all.  Further, I told him that unless it happens again, to consider this a fluke.

I work in the IT industry.  I regularly encounter computers that will do something strange and unexpected only once.  I often explain to users that a computer is "allowed" to do something strange every now and then, but if the problem recurs, we need to look deeper.  So, I quickly drew up an analogy to explain what I think happened.

NOTE: This is rather geeky content. If you have experience with computer programming, this will make perfect sense.  Otherwise, it might not...Sorry.

See the following tables for how information about my car is stored in my brain:

TblJeepFacts

ItemName	Value	Extra Info
VehicleType	SUV	4x4
EngineType	I6	4.0L
EBrakeLocation	Center Console	NONFUNCTIONAL

TblMiataFacts

ItemName	Value	Extra Info
VehicleType	Passenger	Convertible, 2-seat
EngineType	I4	1.8L
EBrakeLocation	Center Console	FUNCTIONAL

TblChadTodaysCarInfo

ItemName	Pointer	Value
VehicleRecord	TblJeepFacts	N/A
EngineType	TblJeepFacts.EngineType	I6 (4.0L)
EBrakeLocation	TblJeepFacts.EBrakeLocation	Center Console (NONFUNCTIONAL)

TblChadTodaysSubconsciousCarInfo

ItemName	Pointer	Value
VehicleRecord	TblJeepFacts	N/A
EngineType	TblJeepFacts.EngineType	I6 (4.0L)
EBrakeLocation	TblJeepFacts.EBrakeLocation	Center Console (NONFUNCTIONAL)

In the table of information about today's car (I was driving the Jeep), you can see that all the details point to facts about the Jeep, and that everything is consistent, and in the information that is subconsciously stored also has the same, consistent data.

Here's what I believe was stored in my friend's brain:

TblHondaFacts

ItemName	Value	Extra Info
VehicleType	Passenger	FWD
EngineType	I4	2.0L
EBrakeLocation	Center Console	FUNCTIONAL

TblDodgeFacts

ItemName	Value	Extra Info
VehicleType	Passenger	FWD, 4-door
EngineType	V6	3.0L
EBrakeLocation	Driver Foot-well	FUNCTIONAL

TblFriendTodaysCarInfo

ItemName	Pointer	Value
VehicleRecord	TblHondaFacts	N/A
EngineType	TblHondaFacts.EngineType	I4 (2.0L)
EBrakeLocation	TblDodgeFacts.EBrakeLocation	D river Foot-well (FUNCTIONAL)

TblFriendTodaysSubconsciousCarInfo

ItemName	Pointer	Value
VehicleRecord	TblHondaFacts	N/A
EngineType	TblHondaFacts.EngineType	I4 (2.0L)
EBrakeLocation	TblHondaFacts.EBrakeLocation	Center Console (FUNCTIONAL)

As you can see, the pointer in TblFriendTodaysCarInfo.EBrakeLocation is not pointing to TblHondaFacts.EBrakeLocation, but rather to TblDodgeFacts.EBrakeLocation.  So, when my friend attempted to retrieve the information about where the e-brake was located, he pulled up the wrong information.

Every time our brain looks up information, it does a consistency check to make sure it's not in error.  If it finds an error, it will either correct it or alert our conscious minds to it and we will realize we were thinking about the wrong car.  This usually occurs because there's something that is inconsistent about the information retrieved.  Had his memory of the location of the e-brake pedal contained something impossible like "in the trunk," his brain would have tossed it out and either found the right information, or alerted his consciousness that there was a problem.

Since the information in TblFriendTodaysSubconsciousCarInfo.EBrakeLocation is correct, when my friend came into the garage and parked his car, he automatically grabbed the e-brake handle and pulled it, without ever realizing it.

This one little tiny change in a neuron somewhere in his brain is what created all this commotion.

My own experiences with memory and suggestibility

During the discussion of what happened and my supposition of what happened in his brain, I related a story to him that actually happened to me.

Back when I was 16 years old and still had my temporary driving permit, my friends Frank and Greg and I would go out in Frank's parents Datsun Maxima Wagon.  Yeah, I said DATSUN.  This car was old enough to be from before Datsun changed their name to Nissan. Anyway, I digress.

On one evening, late at night, we were out driving like a bunch of crazy assholes -- much like you'd expect any trio of 16-18 year-old males to be doing. We were on a road that had two 90-degree turns back-to-back. We were hot-dogging through those turns going WAY too fast for the handling characteristics of that car.  In the middle of the second turn, we lost control, and slid off the road down an embankment into a guy's yard.  I'm sure the guy was quite used to cars landing in his yard, based on the scarring in the earth there.

Once we came to rest, we quickly got out of the guy's yard.  We drove down the road and the car was making a strange rubbing sound.  We got out. We discovered that we had bent the front right fender far enough to contact the tire.  I placed my foot on the crease that was sticking out and pressed it back in.  This made the fender stop touching the tire, and made the car drivable.

Frank's parents were kinda strict and uptight.  Frank was freaking out.  He was positive that his parents would kill him.  And, having met his parents, I was worried that they might actually do it. So, we decided to come up with a story to explain how we went off the road.

We concocted a story that somebody had been harassing us and we were trying to get away from them.  We further embellished the story to say that they had cut us off in the middle of that turn by passing us, which caused Frank to swerve and lose control.  We took the next 20 minutes to flesh out the story a bit more so that it was believable.

We were going south on State Route 4 (a four-lane highway). When we were getting close to Greg's house, Frank says to me, "Chad, take the wheel.  I don't feel too good."  I reached over from the passenger seat and the moment my hand touched the wheel, Frank passed out.  His head hit the driver's window HARD, so I knew that he wasn't joking around. We were careening down this road with an unconscious driver, going 35-40MPH, and with me (a 16-year-old kid) holding the wheel and I only had my temporary driving permit.

Thankfully, I discovered at that time that I am one of those "calm in the face of danger" people. I calmly reached up, turned on the emergency blinkers, remembered that the e-brake in that car was non-functional and skipped trying to use it. I then put the automatic transmission into neutral, unclasped my seat belt and climbed over Frank's bulky frame so that I could reach the brake pedal.  Once I got the car stopped, I reached over and put the car in park, and breathed a sigh of relief.  I had managed to stop the car without wrecking.

Greg and I moved Frank to the passenger seat and I drove the car to Greg's house.  His mother is a nurse, and we were only about 300 yards from his house at the time.  We got Frank inside, and Greg's mom decided to call the EMS.  By the time they got there, Frank was lucid and talking normally.  He refused to be taken to the hospital and the squad guys said that he seemed OK.  At that point, we decided that we needed to take Frank home.

Since I had my temporary permit, I drove Frank's car with him in the passenger seat, and Greg and his mother followed us to give me a ride home after taking Frank home. Frank was still kinda out of it, and was resting with his head against the window.  I guess he was going in and out of consciousness, but I didn't realize it at the time.

All of a sudden, Frank sat up in the seat screaming and flailing his arms.  He was clearly out of his mind.  After about 15 seconds of this, he passed out cold and we decided to take him to the hospital that was only a few miles away.  We called his parents and they came to the hospital.  We told them the concocted story and they believed it. His parents took him home the next morning and that was the end of it. Greg and I continued to hang out with Frank, and we continued to drive around like crazy assholes.

After telling all this story to my friend, he looked at me like "OK, how does this factor in?"

I told him that about 6 months after the incident, Frank, Greg and I were sitting around a table chatting.  Frank remembered back to that night and said "I can't believe that the guy ran us off the road like that."

Greg and I looked at each other.  Could Frank be messing around?  I told him that he was wrong, and related the real story to him.  He swore up, down, side-to-side and on about 15 people's graves that a car had cut us off in that turn.  He described the car. It was clear that he had actually stored the concocted story in his memory as though it were reality.

It took Greg and I quite a while to convince him that we were right and that he was remembering wrong.  I surmised that in his stressed state because he was worried about how his parents would react, he became hyper suggestible and when we concocted the story, it got recorded as "real."

Conclusion

I explained to my friend that sometimes our brains do strange things.  We talked about how it's possible that your brain can have a small error that is undetected because the error is consistent.  We left soon after that, and I reassured him one last time saying "I tell users this all the time: you're allowed to have a fluke every now and then.  If it happens again, we need to look deeper."

I'm sure he spent the rest of the evening waiting to see Rod Serling step out of the corner and say "A man drives his car to the grocery store, discovers that his car is missing it's emergency brake.  On the way home he thinks that he has driven himself crazy, but instead, he has driven directly into.......The Twilight Zone."

Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death!

Patrick Henry is spinning in his grave

More and more, I hear stories of government entities encroaching on the rights of the citizen; the latest affront is Los Angeles County's "Nuisance Abatement Teams."

I was recently directed to an article about several off-the-grid residents who live in the Antelope Valley of L.A. County being forced to leave and destroy their property. These people are living off-the grid out in the middle of the desert.  Some of these folks don't have neighbors for 10 miles in any direction, yet the Nuisance Abatement Teams are claiming that they are responding to code violations and "complaints from neighbors."

Unfortunately, these people chose to set up their structures in L.A. County.  They should have expected that they could someday be subject to the building codes of that county, since there is a very major U.S. City there.

What makes this story especially interesting to me is that there is a planning commission that wants to "improve" the Antelope Valley, by adding things like an airport, highways and possibly high-speed rail. If the residents of the area were conveniently no longer living there, the land in question could be obtained very cheaply.

This is one of the reasons we chose Hudspeth County, TX.  There really aren't any building codes out there.  With the exception of some overly officious pricks in the local Electric CO-OP office, you're pretty much able to to whatever you want with your land. Since we don't plan to be on the grid out there, dealing with the CO-OP office isn't really on our radar at this point.

We plan to build a natural structure out there; probably an earth-bag-walled or strawbale-walled structure.  We don't plan those walls to be load-bearing, so any potential "code violations" in the basic structure should be minimal.  We call it "The HexHouse."

While I do think that the residents in Antelope Valley bear some responsibility and "should have expected" this at some time, I feel that the treatment they are getting from the local government is awful.  Really?  ARMED RAIDS?  Guns and Riot Gear?

Our society is collapsing.  It happened to Rome.  Nobody wants to learn from history.  It's still fixable, but will require the dedication and hard work of ALL Americans. The apathy needs to end.  I know it sounds hypocritical to say that and then run off to the desert, but I think that we (as a society) need to become more individually self-sufficient first.  This will give us the "base of operations" from which to make changes to the government.

If we are not dependent on the government structure, we will be better able to see (and fix) its flaws.

Reflections on a Made Up Holiday

Why only appreciate Dad one day a year?

Back in the early 1900s, a lady in Spokane, WA began celebrating Father's Day. This day was established as a reaction to the creation of Mother's day a few years earlier. It's identified as being a commercial holliday, and history has bourne that out.

Our society has learned to be a very materialistic bunch.  We have several holidays in the US that center around the idea of making purchases.  Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Sweetest day (A repeat of Valentine's day?) Halloween, and Christmas. There are others, but these are the ones that stick out to me as having been thoroughly corrupted.

None of these holidays were originally intended to become commercial days, but leave it to Americans to turn a day that is meant to honor your mom & dad, tell your sweetie that you love them, to remember the dead, or to celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ into "if you don't go out and buy xxx or yyy, you're a bad person and should feel guilty about it."

I however, believe that we should honor our mothers and fathers daily.  Why do I need to wait for the 3rd Sunday in June to tell my father that I love him and miss him?  Why can't I call him up and remind him of how special he is to me in the middle of September?

My Dad

My father, Daniel Douglas, participated in my conception somewhere in mid- to late- November of 1973.  Since that moment, I have had a father. I have very few memories of my early years while living in California. The most notable (and humorous) was the look on my father's face when he came upstairs into the nursery to find that I had removed my diaper and completey covered myself and the walls in its contents.  I still remember the look of "oh, good GOD!" that was on his face.  I could not have been more than two years old at the time.

My father and I didn't have that strong a relationship in my early years.  We didn't do a lot of the traditional "Father-and-Son" activities, and there were other stressors in his life that kept us from connecting emotionally.  I'm not saying that he was a dead-beat or anything of the sort.  He was a guiding force in my life. He instilled my moral code (although mine has likely eroded some over the years.) He disciplined me when I screwed up, and sometimes that meant getting a whoopin'.  (And, for the record, I am a firm believer in corporal punishment - I think our society suffers from a definite lack of butt-whoopins these days!)

However, once I became a teenager, my father began taking a much stronger interest in me as a person, rather than "his kid." I remember the day that the transformation began.  He and I had an argument about something.  It really wasn't that big a thing.  I was in the right in the situation, and got so frustrated that I left the room to go do something else. The transformative moment was when he later came to me and apologized and admitted that he had been in the wrong.

In that one singular moment, my father became "Dad" to me.

Since that day, we have been able to lean on each other for support, learn from each other's experiences and generally become really good friends. Dad and I have spent many hours working on projects together.  From automotive maintenance and computer repairs, to rebuilding my entire front porch roof and re-roofing my garage. My Dad and I have "been there" for each other ever since.

A couple years ago, Dad decided to move to Southern California. My step-sister lives out there and has two young children.  My sister's kids were in their mid-teens and had benefited from the presence of their grandfather as a stabilizing and positive influence in their lives for several years.  It was clear to me that my step-sister's young kids also deserved that stabilizing, positive force, as well. 

I sat my Dad down and told him, "Dad, while I will miss you terribly when you move out there, and it will really suck to not have you around, I think that Emily's kids deserve to have their grandparents in their lives." I told him that I was okay with his plans to move, and that he had my blessing and support in this new chapter in his life.

When he recognized the fact that Emily and her kids needed the stabilizing force that he and my step-mother could bring to their lives, he risked drawing the ire of all his biological kids.  To me, this exemplifies the qualities of "Dad." He made a choice to uproot his life here in Ohio and to set out on a new chapter in his life so that he could be a positive force in someone's life.  He made a choice that, while somewhat unpopular, was clearly the right one.

Father's Day

So, why do we only celebrate our fathers and tell them what they mean to us only once a year?  Why do we run out and buy BBQ Grills, technological toys and new shirts and ties?  Do we really think that material posessions will relate our feelings better than a hug and an "I love you, Dad?"

Why not wait until BBQ grills are on clearance in the late fall and pick it up then?  Then just show up and tell your Dad, "Hey, I know it's late November, but I got a smokin' deal on this BBQ that I knew you'd love." To me, that shows Dad that you learned about frugality as a kid.  It shows him that you're thinking of him all year, and not only on one day that has some text in a little square marked "Sunday" on the June calendar page.

Why not pick up a new tie when you see that one of his old ones is getting a little ragged or out of style?  This will show Dad that you care about how he looks and how he presents himself in public. It will show that you are thinking about him when you happen to be strolling through the Mens department at the local department store.

To me, every day should be Father's Day. Without the act of creation between he and my mother, I would not exist; I wouldn't be writing this blog post now.  I wouldn't be planning a move to Texas.  I would have only been unrealized potential.  Thanks to my father, that potential is actual.

Every single one of us has a father.  It's a biological certainty.  Luckily for me, I not only have a father, but a Dad.

Sometimes, You Have to Go to the Top

Getting Results from our Kroger Ordeal

After having made several attempts to contact Customer Service at Kroger about the issue I blogged about in "The Kroger Company Wants Me to Shop Elsewhere!" I decided that I'd send an email directly to the CEO of Kroger, Dave Dillon.

So, I fired up Outlook in the morning and sent the following to dave.dillon@kroger.com:

  

Mr. Dillon, Let me first state that I realize that you are very busy and don't have a lot of time for the day-to-day operations of individual stores in the Kroger Company.  However, I feel that I've run out of options. On May 3, 2012, my wife was treated very poorly at our local Kroger store.  We tried to escalate to the manager, but when his employees lied to him about what happened, he believed them instead of his long-time customers.  I was very upset about it, and wrote about it in my blog.  Please take a few minutes to read my blog post, since it tells the entire story of the interaction. The Rat Race Losers: The Kroger Company Wants me to Shop Elsewhere! In the intervening weeks since, I have tried to locate contact information for the District Office for the Cincinnati KMA.  I have been unable to get a name, email address or phone number of anyone to contact in that office. When I was speaking to the manager at the store, he told me that he "didn't know" the number for the District Manager, which I can't believe is true. I have also submitted a request to be contacted on the Kroger.com web site.  I specifically asked that someone contact me. I did this on May 21.  I have not heard anything from this contact, either. So, this (if you count my attempts to locate the Cincinnati KMA's contact numbers) makes my fourth attempt to get resolution in this very serious matter.  Since this occurred, I have not set foot in any Kroger store, nor have I purchased fuel or prescriptions from any Kroger location. This is unfortunate; I have always enjoyed the selection and good prices I have seen at my local Kroger.  However, I must stick to my principles here. Until someone at Kroger contacts me about this, I feel that the Kroger Company (as an entity) doesn't really have much interest in me as an individual customer.  Because of this, I will continue to avoid Kroger stores, and I plan to continue reminding people how I was treated, and requesting that they, too, choose to shop elsewhere. This is a black eye for Kroger.  Please ask that someone from the Cincinnati KMA contact me. I would like to resolve this issue and once again feel good about spending my money with the Kroger Company. I can be reached at: Chad Douglas XXX XXX Ave Hamilton, OH 450XX XXX@gmail.com 513-XXX-2XX3 (Cell) Thank you for taking time to address this issue. Sincerely, Chad Douglas

Within a couple of hours I received the following response:

Chad, I apologize for the poor treatment you ([and] your wife) experienced and for not being able to talk to someone outside of the store.  I will be sure you are contacted. Thanks for giving us that opportunity., Dave Dillon

About an hour after having received that email, I had a missed call on my phone.  No voicemail.  I recognized the number was coming from the area where the Cincinnati KMA (Kroger Marketing Area) is located.  So I called it back.  It was, in fact, the Cincinnati KMA. Apparently, when anyone calls out from that office it shows the same number on the Caller ID.  Since there was no voicemail, I was unable to ask for a specific person.  However, I did speak to one of the assistants for the district in which this Kroger store is located.

She assured me she'd ask around and tell whomever called me to call me again--I reminded her that if they don't get hold of me to please leave a voicemail.

Just after 3PM,  my phone rang with an unfamiliar number.  On the other end of the line was Mr. Steve Hils, the district manager in charge of that store.  He apologized profusely for how my wife was treated. He told me that he had just spoken with the manager that handled the situation, and that it had been one of the most intense disciplinary discussions he had ever given in his entire career.  This guy was almost groveling.  I kinda felt bad for him, really.

He explained to me that Kroger empowers their managers to SOLVE problems, not to escalate them. He felt that the situation was handled improperly on a scale that was just amazing.  He told me that it didn't matter whether Linda cursed at the pharm tech or not.  He said, "Even if she DID, it's clear that something the store did got her that agitated, and that the manager should have resolved the issue."

Mr. Hils then asked me what he could do to make up for this horrible situation.  I thought about it for a few moments. 

• I didn't want to irreparably harm the manager.  After all, he's an assistant manager, and is likely in training to become a store manager at some future date.   I also didn't want to seem vindictive.  I decided against asking for his job, or some other heinous disciplinary action. I figure I'll leave that to them to work out.
• I didn't want to come off as "greedy."  So often, businesses feel that they need to compensate upset customers with freebies.  I usually don't accept them.  If I go to a restaurant and get horrible service but still eat my food, I pay for it, even if the manager tries to give it to me free. I tell the manager to train the employee better instead of giving me a freebie.  So, I decided against asking for financial remuneration or store credits/gift cards.

After considering both of these positions, I decided that I wanted to give this district manager a training opportunity. I've worked in management in my life, and I can appreciate the value of a "teaching moment." So, instead of asking for him to be fired or asking for money, I asked that Mr. Hils have the manager write a letter of apology to my wife for the way he treated her.

Although it was inaudible, I believe Mr. Hils let out a sigh of relief.  "It'll be in the mail today," he said. He then asked me if there was anything else I wanted.  I said that the letter of apology would be sufficient, and to keep providing good products at good value to Kroger's customers. 

I told Mr. Hils that I regretted having to contact Mr. Dillon.  I shared that I've been in the position where someone has gone over my head in the past, and I didn't like it very much either, and that since I had not gotten any contact in a month, I felt my only remaining recourse was to go higher in the organization, and the only person whom I knew I could contact was Mr. Dillon himself. 

He assured me that "this incident was entirely and completely our (Kroger's) fault.  There is no excuse for this having gone as far as it did." He thanked me for bringing this matter to his attention, and then we ended the call.

I thought that was the end of it, until later that evening when I received another phone call.  This time it was from the Pharmacy Management.

Ms. Colleen Lindholz explained that she had also received a message from Mr. Dillon asking that they contact me.  We talked about what happened.  She asked me if I knew the name of the pharm tech that had treated Linda so badly.  I told her that I didn't know her name, but that the manager I spoke to that day certainly would.  I related my conversation with Mr. Hils to her and that Mr. Hils would know the manager's name.

Ms. Lindholz agreed with me that it seemed preposterous that the pharmacy manager had "heard" Linda curse the pharm tech, since he could not have been on the phone listening. She also told me that around April of 2012, they had demoted the pharmacy manager at that store and installed a new one.  Unfortunately, this issue occurred after the installation of the new manager, so that clearly wasn't related to this situation.

She asked if there was anything they could do to win back my business. I decided on a similar strategy as with the manager.  I said, "If this pharm tech has a job after this settles, I'd like a letter of apology mailed to my wife for the way she was treated." Ms. Lindholz agreed that she would get a letter sent out right away.  She then said that it looked like we had transferred our prescriptions away from Kroger and asked if there was anything she could do to get our business back.

I advised her that this incident was only one of many over the years, and that we have repeatedly had issues with the Kroger pharmacy.  Because of this, we have decided not to use the Kroger Pharmacy for quite a while, if ever again.  I told her that I had a close friend who used to work in the EasyFill Technical Support department at Kroger and who had told me of some of the technological failings in their system that had resulted in improperly filled scripts, data loss and mis-billings.  Combining that with the attitude that we had experienced from other techs over the years meant that we needed to leave our prescriptions with CVS. We didn't feel that Kroger could serve us properly at this time. She disappointedly told me that she understood my reasons.

So, we are now waiting for two letters of apology from the manager and the pharm tech. I won't go back to Kroger until after I receive them.  I feel it's important to make sure the agreements are kept.

This way, I don't feel "bought back" by a bunch of freebies. I feel that the persons involved have the opportunity to learn a valuable personal and professional lesson about customer service. I think the saddest thing here is that I had to go all the way to the CEO of the company to get the traction I needed to resolve this issue.  This should have been handled much, much earlier.

I guess this just goes to show that when you're treated badly by a business, you need to persist until you are satisfied.  Linda and I had planned to boycott Kroger indefinitely while continuing to remind people of the problem until it got resolved.  I guess my tenacity in this paid off.

Which Came First - The Chicken or the Egg?

A review of Fresh Eggs Daily

This blog review may end up being very short. I'm having way too much fun exploring the site and how many words does it take to say, "I love it" anyway? I haven't had this much fun exploring a blog for quite a while! I was blog-tunneling from another favorite of mine Frugally Sustainable when I spotted this blog. I have been avidly reading every page in the archive.

This blog's for you if you're

• Curious about chickens
• Thinking of raising some chickens
• Interested in chicken or egg recipes 
• Planning to homestead

It's real, it's funny, it's interesting. I love all the bright photos of chickens from every breed and stage of life! The step-by-step recipes and instructions are great too. What I found a very pleasant surprise was the frequent correlation between herbs for people and herbs for chickens. I will definitely visit Fresh Eggs Daily again and soon!

The Ends Played Themselves Against the Middle

How I got a better deal without even trying

In my last post, I told you all about dropping Time Warner Cable completely by getting an antenna for TV and Clear for my Internet.

Well, two days ago, I get a call out of the blue from Time Warner Cable.  Apparently, I came to the attention of their "Customer Retention" department.

The rep on the phone asked me why I was cancelling my service with TWC.  I told them that I didn't want TV service anymore, and since TWC was insisting on charging me $150 if I dropped TV (even if I kept RoadRunner at $53.95/mo for 10Mbps) I told them that I didn't want to do business with a company that wouldn't waive that fee for a long-time customer.

Then, just like in the GodFather, he made me a deal that I "couldn't refuse."

Well, technically, I could have refused, especially since I didn't own any prize racehorses, nor is there enough room in my bed for both me and a bloodied horse head.  Anyway, I digress.

I was told by the rep that if I kept my RoadRunner, not only would they waive the $150 fee, but they would give me the 10Mbps service level for $29.99 for 12 months, after which it would increase by $5.

Since I was going to be paying Clear $49.99 for 3-6Mbps, it made a whole lot of sense to return to TWC. Saving $20/mo and getting faster service.  Of course, this means that we're back "on the grid" a little more, but right now, saving money to build up our resources for the Texas move is more important than being "off the grid."

So, I went online to change my service level with Clear so that I would not be automatically billed at the end of the month since I would not be using their service anymore.  That's when I discovered their 15-day guarantee!

Apparently, since I chose to cancel within 15 days, I get a complete, full refund for both the monthly fee and the Clear modem, as soon as I return it. I received the prepaid UPS label today.  I'll get it off to UPS tomorrow evening.

So, without trying, or taking any deliberate steps, I got to try out Clear (which was adequate) and now I'm getting a better overall deal on my Internet service...all without losing any money!

Woot!

Mischief Managed

A little further "off the grid."

Thursday, my Clear modem arrived. I took it up into the attic and set it up and got 4/5 lights for signal strength. Then I came back down and started to do some testing.

It's quite a bit slower than my RoadRunner.  My RoadRunner was 10Mbps and the Clear is just barely 3Mbps.  So it's 33% of the speed.

That's about the speed we will expect to get when we're out in Texas, so we are just going to learn to adapt to the slower speed. So, I called Time Warner to cancel my cable service.  They tried all kinds of things to keep me as a customer, except for the one thing that would have worked. 

You see, a few years ago, TWC was offering special packages that required that you enter into a 2-year agreement.  Now, had I left my service options alone, I would have long ago gotten out of that 2 year agreement.  However, every time I made a change to my service, they reset the clock on the 2 years.  What a crock of poo.

So, when I told them I was cancelling, they informed me that there would be a $150 early cancellation fee. The rep I was speaking to even told me that I could drop the TV service and keep the RoadRunner at 10Mbps for $53.95/mo.  My 3Mbps Clear service costs $50/mo.  However, if I dropped the TV service I would be charged the $150 fee, regardless of whether I kept RoadRunner or not.

I reminded them that I had been a customer of theirs for 11 years, and that I wanted them to waive that fee.  They refused.  I told them that if they are going to insist on charging me a fee that I could not do business with them any further.  I'm not going to pay it; I don't feel it's a fair charge, especially since TWC no longer does contracts for their service, but they grandfathered me when they stopped doing contracts.  So no matter what I did, I was going to be stuck with some fee for early cancellation. If I had just called to make a change to my service, they would have wanted to reset the clock again, even though there is no more clock for "new" customers.

This new "spirit" of "customer service" is a bunch of crap.  There is very little service being provided to the customer.  Companies seem to have forgotten that without customers, they don't exist.  They've discovered that an upset customer usually just whines for a while, but then usually returns.  They now count on this.  So they don't care if you get mad.

Anyway, Clear, despite being slower, will never have contracts. I can start and stop my Internet service at will.  This gives me freedom of choice as well as flexibility.

I like choice.  I'm willing to lose some speed to be free.