I received a reply from Wendy at the Red Cross in response to yesterday’s declaration of war. I’m somewhat impressed. I fully expected that post to go for weeks or months without anyone other than a few friends seeing it.
There’s nothing personal in there, so I’ve left Wendy’s reply as a public comment. The contact address she mentions is the Greater Cheseapeake region’s general contact information. That may be a useful resource for anyone else who’s trying to get themselves removed from the Red Cross’ calling list, though I should also point out that these are the same people who were supposed to take me off the calling list back in the summer.
In her comment, Wendy asks me to email her with my full name so she can have “the appropriate people” look into the issue.
The problem with just emailing them my name is that it gives the Red Cross an easy out. They can simply say, “Oh, we got your email, we’re looking into it.” and then the email just sits on a computer somewhere and nobody ever looks at it again.
I’ve replied to Wendy with a request for a phone number where I can talk to someone about my concerns. I want to be able to verify that the problems are actually being addressed and hold someone accountable if they’re not.
This is about more than just unwanted phone calls. This is about the Red Cross treating people like cattle.
Category Archives: Rants
Not merely ramblings, these are flat-out rants.
Declaring War on the Red Cross
For the past several years, the Red Cross has been offering various gifts for people who came in to donate blood. Some of it was things like T-shirts or hats; in 2006 they upped the ante and started trying to entice potential donors with free raffles for $100 worth of gasoline. Instead of gimmicks, maybe what they really need to try is treating their donors with some respect. Continue reading Declaring War on the Red Cross
Taking it for granted
I had to be in Towson this morning by 9:00am for a Jaycees meeting. Factoring in the hour-plus drive to get there, time to take Wylie out, and otherwise get myself ready for the day I knew the day would starting awful early. Right about 6:00am, Wylie and I headed out the door for our usual morning walk.
Normally I don’t bother turning on the outside lights before heading out for the morning walk. During the week, the timing works out so the sun’s usually coming up while we’re out. And on the weekend, I can sleep late enough that the problem doesn’t exist. But because it was so early this time, I considered breaking with tradition and leaving a light on so I could find the place. Continue reading Taking it for granted
Junk Mail
Looking through some recent junk mail, I discovered a letter from Chase bank. At first glance, I thought the large text said, “Convert your equity into debt!”
That didn’t sound right, so I took another look. What it really said was, “Convert your equity into cash!” It was an offer for a home equity line of credit.
So, it turns out I read it correctly the first time after all.
Cleaning up the Political Landscape
Election season is over for another year. Walking past the elementary school up the road this morning, Wylie and I counted approximately 60 campaign signs still on display in front of the school. (Perhaps someone thinks the kids are voting today?)
The election ended last night. Granted, there’s a lot of signs out there, so I’m willing to wait 24 hours for them to get cleaned up. But those signs are ugly. Starting Thursday, I think all the candidates (successful or otherwise) should be required to pay a fine of $5 per sign per day for every campaign sign still on display on public land.
I’ll bet that would get the trash picked up a lot faster. 🙂
Updated 11:00 pm
The signs up by the school are gone. Obviously, one of the candidates read this and realized the only way to avoid bankruptcy was to hurry up and get rid of the signs near all the schools post-haste.
Perhaps that’ll get the rest of them cleaned up too.
Getting Better
One of the problems with getting over a cold is that you find yourself getting caught up on your sleep. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself; if I’d been getting a bit more sleep, I probably wouldn’t have got sick in the first place.
But after spending two days resting, recovering, and turning off the alarm clock; I find myself unable to go to sleep at bedtime.
And if you don’t get enough sleep, you might get sick!
Human Energy
According to the story line of The Matrix, when the machines rose to power, the human race made a last ditch attempt to stop them by blocking out the sun. The tactic worked in that the machines were no longer able to get energy from the sun. But the machines were resourceful and found another source of energy.
The machines adapted themselves to draw energy from living organisms – their former masters. Humans were raised in vats in huge farms the size of cities. And in order to keep their human livestock docile, the machines connected them all into a shared virtual reality so detailed that the humans had no idea there was anything else.
Chevron has been running a series of ads lately about their efforts to find new energy sources and to make better use of the ones we already have. The commercials all end with a tagline about how they’re going to do this by using “…the energy we have most in abundance: human energy”
I sure hope Chevron isn’t getting ideas from the movies!
Getting out the Vote
One of the downsides to living in the DC area is that you get inundated with political ads pretty much nonstop. And during an election year, it just gets worse. The barrage of ads is bad enough, but making it worse is that the ads contain little of any substance.
I ran into Zaphod’s campaign ad last year, shortly after the Hitchhiker movie came out on DVD. The movie’s not as good as the original BBC series, but that’s OK. I figure Zaphod’s a better choice than some of the other jokers who are running for office. His campaign ad is certainly no less informative.
Who needs to count sheep?
There was an ad on the radio a couple days ago for a revolutionary new prescription sleep aid; the latest in a long line of sleep aids claiming to be “non-addictive and non-habit forming.” (Believe that and I’ve got some ocean-front property in Arizona you might be interested in.) At the end of the commercial came the usual list of possible side-effects that make the cure sound worse than the disease. Midway through the list was one that really caught my attention.
May cause drowsiness.
Isn’t that the entire point?
Dinner and a floor show
One day last week Laura and I decided to go to Lone Star for dinner.
More specifically, it was Lone Star #4306. I don’t know why that would matter, but they seem to worry that people won’t know that bit of information. Neither the waitress nor the hostess told us the store number. They no doubt guessed – quite correctly – that we didn’t care about the store number. (Besides, how strange would it be if either of them greeted us with “Welcome to Lone Star #4306, the 4306th store in the chain”?) But the management (probably at the corporate office) compensated for that by programming the register to print the store number across the top of the check in the same size print as the name of the restaurant. It seems quite odd, but most managers seem to be odd in one way or another. But I digress…
It used to be that you could go to Lone Star (and this was the entire chain, not just #4306) and while you waited for your food, you could munch on peanuts and throw the shells on the floor. It leant a fun sort of folksy air to the place and made for some crunchiness as you walked to your table. That ended a couple years ago when the health department (I have no idea what level, but it does seem to be a national thing) declared that anything fun, folksy or crunchy was unhealthy and forced them to end the whole peanut thing. (This no doubt also made life a lot easier for the staff members who had to sweep up the peanut shells at the end of each day.)
Despite the lack of peanuts (or shells) we still enjoyed our dinner and halfway through the meal something most unexpected happened.
Lone Star has a Western theme to it and the background music is Country. The song playing right then was “You Never Even Called Me by My Name” and David Allan Coe was just about halfway through explaining how his friend Steve Goodman had ended up writing an extra verse for it, making it the perfect County and Western song when the music switched to Tracy Byrd’s “Watermelon Crawl.”
What happened next seemed like something from a musical, where one of the characters says something to someone and the next thing you know the know, the entire cast, plus all the extras in the background are suddenly singing and dancing as if it’s a perfectly common occurrence and the entire population spontaneously feels the need to sing. And just like the residents of one of those only-in-the-movies towns, the moment the music changed, the entire restaurant staff started dancing!
Bunny Sue Fu and others have told me that this is a common occurrence, but evidently I’ve never timed my dinners correctly. And just like the folks in those movies, the people working in that restaurant seemed to be enjoying themselves.
And then, just like in the movies, the moment the song ended, everyone went back to work.