Buon Natale

Christmas Dinner "To Do" List

Only a high primal thinker is capable of this much organization

Christmas dinner was great! Was it due to the ecetra?

About Charge-A-Plates

Most of us carry credit cards but my high primal thinker carries charge-a-plates as well as credit cards (What's a "high primal thinker"? Check out Living With A High Primal Thinker). This fact may tell you a little about the high primal thinker’s age. (For those of you who are still babes , charge-a-plates were the forerunner of today’s plastic credit cards. They actually were metal plates embossed with a name and account number and the size of a military dog tag . Most department stores issued charge-a-plates.) Charge-a-plates have gone the way of the horse and buggy but for some individuals a plastic credit card is still a charge-a-plate if it has been issued by a department store. Apparently the distinction is that these same individuals believe that besides generating a balance due bill a charge-a-plate has the ability to generate countless catalogs with tempting coupons which arrive in your mailbox whereas a VISA, MasterCard or Discover card merely generates a balance due bill.

Now you and I know that department store credit cards no longer are prestige cards in spite of the preferred customer label sometimes attached to them. A platinum VISA card or a titanium MasterCard are much more distinguishable as a sign of good credit. Wait a minute, platinum and titanium are metals! Could these be charge-a-plates in disguise? A call to my Titanium VISA card customer service revealed that they had never heard of charge-a-plates and assured me that my titanium card was actually a genuine plastic credit cards. What a relief! While I had customer service on the line I asked if there was any advantage to carrying countless number of department store credit cards as well as their Titanium VISA card. Customer service had no answer to my question and proceeded to transfer me to their account resolution department. I was not going to go that route so I hung up.

With identity theft being what it is today I cautioned my high primal thinker that carrying around a multitude of credit cards was inviting identity theft. She agreed but responded it was the lesser of two evils. The worst alternative would be to be placed on a department store “shit” list for having discarded their card. She also reminded me that our savvy daughter who has a degree in business administration carried a number of department store cards as well as VISA and MasterCard. Case closed!

As luck would have it during the course of a conversation my daughter revealed that she had long discarded her department store cards and had received no hate calls from the store’s customer service representative. In fact she only carries two credit cards. She emphatically pointed out the folly of seniors carrying a wallet full of credit cards. That did it - all of the high primal thinker’s arguments for carrying charge-a-plates disappeared. I pounced on the opportunity and made her an offer she could not refuse. I would store her department store card cards in our safe . If she ever wanted them she could try getting into the safe to retrieve them. I do mean try since she did not have the combination.

On our next trip to the mall she carried a purse sans charge-a-plates. Every purchase she made was sheer torture as she fumbled for a charge-a-plate and found only a VISA. Withdrawal pains were plainly visible. It was one of the most inexpensive visits we ever had to the mall. No charge-a-plates, no coupons, meager purchases.

A sulking high primal thinker in withdrawal is a site to behold. I finally relented and returned her charge-a-plates to her. It was in the nick of time . Our Christmas shopping was not done but armed with charge-a-plates and coupons it was off to the mall. All went well until my high primal thinker presented a coupon along with her charge-a-plate when making a purchase. She discovered that along with her plate she should have brought along a lawyer to decipher the fine print in the coupons. The coupons were not honored but the purchases were made and the Christmas shopping was finally completed.

The high primal thinker is very smug about getting her plates back. In fact she has them in a new credit card holder purchased with a charge-a-plate and a 15% off coupon. I lost the battle and knew how Napoleon felt as he retreated from Moscow. Unlike Napoleon, I still plan on winning the war.

The Senate today overwhelmingly approved legislation which will keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. It is a step forward. Now we need to find a way to keep guns out of the hands of the crazies who officially are not mentally ill!

Punishment For Baseball's Steroid Sinners

There seems to be some controversy as to whether the active players named in the Mitchell baseball steroid report should be punished or not. Punishment is in order but not a suspension for "x" number of games. A suitable punishment might be to force baseball's sinners to wear a uniform with a scarlet S on their jersey. This should especially go over big in Boston.

Customer Service Can Be A Pain In The Ass

Customer Service these days is an adventure , especially on the phone. Many horror stories on the subject have been written so it is not my intent to add another. I might add that I have had some pleasant experiences dealing with “representatives”. Still more frequently than is good for one’s blood pressure bad experiences do develop and overshadow the pleasant experiences. It has become obvious to me that the horror story has its beginnings one minute into a call when you suddenly realize that the person you are talking to is bored by their job and could care less about your problem. Is it possible that “Customer Service Representative” is one of those jobs that American citizens would prefer not to do? Illegal aliens have come to the rescue in labor intensive jobs such as picking fruit, plucking chickens and landscaping but I’m afraid they are not a viable alternative for manning the customer service phone calls, although Spanish would be more welcome than the garbled English practiced by many customer representatives. So how do we eliminate the problem of dealing with an unknowledgeable, rude customer service representative? Eliminate the problem which necessitated the phone call in the first place! Most inquiries deal with health insurance coverage and product quality problems. Obviously all that has to be done is to simplify health insurance coverage and make product quality the hallmark of product marketing. Healthcare insurance problems? Universal health care, that’s the answer, the rules are the same for everyone and not subject to dispute! The product quality issue calls for a more complex solution. Why not complicate the tax code even more and establish a Product Quality Tax Credit Ala the Earned Income Credit. Of course this should be available only to those having less than fifty thousand dollars in taxable income. I’m sure IRS statisticians could work out a formula basing the amount of credit on projected costs of defective products purchased by people in various tax brackets. To keep this credit under control a new Federal agency would have to be created which would establish quality scores similar to credit scores and apply these to retailers. Retailers with unacceptable scores would be monetarily penalized much in the same manner that credit card companies raise interest rates for cardholders with low credit scores. Retailers with low quality scores faced with profits being eaten away by poor product quality penalties would surely drop vendors responsible for selling junk! The vendors in turn would find sweat shops willing to further punish workers making junk or in a moment of weakness they might resort to domestic manufacturers. It seems like a lot of trouble to fix a problem caused by an unknowledgeable, rude representative and I’m sure in the final analysis it would only create a need for call centers to handle tax credit and product quality score questions and problems. Doing so creates more sorely needed jobs but it would only serve to continue the problem it was supposed to solve in the first place - the pain in the ass caused by some customer service phone calls. Would a better solution be to attract knowledgeable and courteous customer service representatives by paying them more?

Another Gun Tragedy

The Omaha, Nebraska shooting was the latest in a series of mass killings that have plagued the United States. Once again we will turn a deaf ear towards effective gun control. The White House said it was a "terrible tragedy." That’s about as far as Bush will take the issue. Not surprisingly little is heard about gun control in the presidential debates. No one wants to alienate the “sportsmen” voting bloc a.k.a. the NRA (The next time a candidate slips in a comment about how he likes to hunt I'm going to throw up). We cringe at the violence in Iraq but accept the everyday gun violence on our streets. Will one of the presidential candidates please come forward and propose a program for effective gun control or do we need more massive tragedies before a voice is heard. The Supreme Court is taking up the issue but considering the make-up of the Court I wouldn't hold my breath for anything positive other than some rhetoric about the right to bear arms.