Customer Service

And speaking of airborn swine, with due deference to Floyd, I steal…because I love;

You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need.
When a pinhead cuts your line, and puts you on the street,
You gotta be able to find a high bandwidth teat with your eyes closed.
And then logging in silently, down wind and out of sight,
You gotta blog when the moment is right without thinking…

Which is my way of bitching that my building still has no phone service: no DSL, no voice, no VoIP. It’s very much like the 70’s, but without all the drugs and sport-fucking.

In the interest of simple justice, it would not be fair of me to bitch about the Denizens of Malebolge SBC without explaining where I spent my afternoon and why.

Yesterday the beaches opened in Chicago, and the weather was mostly nice, and I was not at work and it would be a perfectly reasonable assumption to make that I jumped in to my cutoffs and made for the shore. The water is still dangerously cold – real, no-kidding cold; the search for a rafter that got swept into Lake Michigan was called off a few days ago because no one could have survived more than an hour unprotected in the open water – but the sand is warm and the beautiful women are just aching to throw off their parkas once and for all and skin down to bikinis and biker shorts.

Bless them. Bless them all.

Instead I spent the day in an internet-free car dealership in a remote, conservative suburb of Chicago. I had been here since the sun was barely up in the East and as I started writing this, the sun was hunkered down behind threatening clouds well into the West. Long enough to have lunch at the restaurant across the street; white crew-cut husbands and white wives festooned with baby-phenalia starting the weekend a little early. Having a bite together and getting a jump on the Memorial Day plans; in one case ditching work to do so (to which I can attest only because the husband was saying, “We’ll I’m in the doctor’s office right now...” to his cell phone as he and his wife and two children rolled past my table, and then he winked at me and smiled.)

Not a beard anywhere but on my own face. Not an earring to be seen anywhere, but pierced modestly thought the lobes of my waitress. Big box retailers here and there.

Moderate Illinois Republican country. Perfectly nice folks so long as we don’t start talking about Dear Leader and I start pounding tables with my shoes, but not where I would opt to spend a day, so why am I here?

We’ll once upon a time my ex and I had a car…

And then we were in an accident that should have rightfully seriously injured one or both of us, but it didn’t. Not a scratch on either of us, but the car was a dead, so we went about buying another of that make. I’m very loyal that way.

I went on the web and did the homework and the Blue Book-ery and so forth, and it came to pass that there were three dealerships that carried what we were looking for: one a mile south of us, one two miles north, and one waaay out west.

But the first Pig built their dealership out of lies and hotties. And the second Pig...but, I’m getting ahead of myself.

After checking them out on the web, we went to the first dealership – the one a mile away. I had called and asked if they had the car I wanted – their site said they did – and they confirmed that, yes, it was there, new and shiny and at the price I wanted; I could drive it off the lot.

We got there an hour later the car was “gone”. No one was sure exactly what had happened – it was apparently a mystery like unto crop circles or why Floridians are so much crazier per capita than the rest of the country -- but they were ever so eager to show me ANOTHER vehicle, different model, only a little bit more.

Despite the fact that I was there with my then-wife, they even threw in a sloe-eyed, twenty-something babe replete with a bare-midriff and heels to writhe in barely concealed ecstasy in front of said vehicle. I asked her to get her manager. Then explained to them both very slowly that they were both time-wasting, lying cocksuckers and that I would never, ever come back and would urge everyone I knew to boycott the place.

And the next place we got an older guy; rheumy eyes, gray in every aspect except for the 100-year-old nicotine-themed suit he was wearing. Same deal, same bait-and-switch. No hottie, which saddened me.

I’ve got no beef with tin men or rag men or dirt pushers per se; but don’t fucking insult my intelligence. As Bogie says in “Casablanca”; “I don't mind a parasite--I object to a cut-rate one.”

The third place said they had the car, and they did. Just what I wanted, at the quoted price. A clean, airy space with a proper waiting area and a tiny, indoor play-lot for people with kids, or, I suppose, grown-ups who like to play with plastic blocks and sit in miniature cars and go vroooom. They were very clear about each step in the process and answered every question, so I signed where indicated and paid them on time every month.

And I when my ride needs a tune up or I’m navigating the tank-traps that we laughingly call pot-holes on some of the surface streets around here and something goes ker-whang! and the front starts to shimmy, I take it all the way back to them. Even though it costs me extra time; even if it’s the better part of a day sometimes.

They took my appointment and got me on when they said they would. They put it up on the lift, checked it by hand and ran the diagnostics and told me – component by component – what needed to be replaced or reground. If I were so inclined, I could have watched the mechanic do his thing and taken the snapped steel belt and all the rest home in a bag.

Attention spineless fuckers of Mainstream Media. Attention Congressional douchebags. It’s a fucking car dealership. No one even manufactures jokes about car dealers anymore, they are than far beyond hackneyed and trite. And yet these guys have worked hard enough, made their process transparent enough and made honesty a serious enough day-to-day habit for me to willingly while away the better party of my Friday here, and pay out a considerable chunk of cash that I could absolutely not afford to part with, and not feel cheated.

We who are laid siege to by advertising and relentless bullshit salvos from the moment we wake up until the moment we fall into an as-yet ad-free sleep, we are hungry for a little integrity. We’re willing to pay – even to pay a little extra – if you just treat us with a little respect and not like a mark. In the face of universal hucksterism, it turns out that acting with simple candor is a profitable commodity as well as being, surprise!, the right thing to do.

Maybe there’s a lesson there.