Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Consumer Rage

• So American Airlines is planning to charge $15 per checked in bag? Fuck them. If they do it, I will never fly them again for as long as I live. Maybe they should charge you extra to use the restroom. Or for walking towards your seat. Maybe they will expect passengers to wear diapers, so they can dispense with the restrooms altogether. Flying in this country has become even worse than anybody thought possible, it gets worse by the second and nobody does anything about it. Passengers should revolt en masse.

• Yesterday, I went into a Cosi as I was making time to watch a play on Broadway (August: Osage County, great fun, kinda HBO-ey, amazing ensemble cast, except for a couple of local doozies. The Steppenwolf people rocked).
I purchased a Grande Camomile tea for almost $3. The restaurant is big and roomy. There were barely any people in there. It was in the middle of the afternoon, neither lunch nor dinner time. The tea was so boiling hot that I had to wait like half an hour before I could drink it. I was doing some work, sipping my tea. I was considering sticking around and buying something else to eat there. Just then the store manager came to me and another guy who was writing on his laptop, and told us we had to buy more stuff or leave. I told him it took half an hour for the tea to be drinkable. After a while, he sent a waiter to plop a menu on my table. Had they left me alone, I would have gladly ordered something else of my own volition, but when someone in a stinking, rotting, putrid excuse of a café comes to your table with the purposes of shooing you out, particularly if nobody else seems to want to be in there anyway, well that means war.
Memo to the Cosi people: you are in the hospitality business. In civilized countries elsewhere, establishments are happy to get customers and they treat them with respect. It is understood that people linger. I hope you linger in hell.
I will never, as long as I live, patronize your establishments again. (I'm sending them a letter too, believe me). People may hate Starbucks, but at least they got it right. They understand that they are there to give pleasure to people, not to treat them like shit. So I went to Starbucks, purchased a bottled Frappuccino and a pastry and lingered to my heart's content, as did everyone else in that store.
Also, the barista at Cosi burned his finger and he spoke to his Neanderthal manager because he was hurting, and the asshole completely ignored him in front of the customers. He wouldn't even go to the first aid box to get this guy some ointment. To what Ms. Bette Davis would have said: What a dump!

I'm on a diet. Do you think this may be the reason that I'm unduly ornery?

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