Humor

Well, I just had a rather embarrassing moment at the store. I was standing in line, waiting to pay for my things; I was next to be rung up. The guy at the checkout said to the lady in front of me, “You’ve got one more 2 liter of Pepsi here, too.” I glanced forward and saw 10 or 15 large bags of potato chips as well. The checkout guy then told the lady her total: $67 and some change.

I put the 2 liters of soda, the chips, her total, and tomorrow’s date together, and commented, “Wow, looks like you’re getting ready to have a big party.” The lady just looked at me and smiled slightly. She said nothing. Okay, I thought, so much for small talk…

As she was pushing her cart away, though, I looked at its contents. Only two 2 liters of soda. No bags of chips. She had a lot of different things, including a rather large assortment of household cleaning stuff. I looked at the checkout counter and saw that all of the bags of chips hadn’t belonged to her - I was looking at a display of chips, simply situated next to the checkout counter. D’oh.

No wonder she wouldn’t talk to me. Yeah, lady, looks like you’re getting ready to throw a big party with a cart full of Windex and scrubbing pads.

Ugh.

I wrote back in August of 2007 that my father was receiving mail from Physicicians Mutual, the life insurance company; most of the mail had Welcome back! in big letters stamped across it. There’s nothing wrong per se with getting mail from life insurance companies, except that in August of 2007, my father had been dead nearly 2 years. He died in December of 2005.

Well, fast forward to now: my dad is still getting mail from Physicians Mutual. As time has gone on, the slogans have gotten better and better. The latest (and perhaps greatest, pardon the cliché)?

It’s Not Too Late!

Oh yes. I believe it is. If you’ve enough money to toss out, you can get life insurance when you’re direly ill, but when you’re dead? I’m afraid not. Perhaps Joshua was right, though, with his comment on my previous post about this: Physician’s Mutual just wants to be, ahem, prepared in case my dad claws his way out of his coffin and zombie-walks back home. If he does, they’ll be ready to accept him right back into their fold.

It’ll be the next sector that life insurance companies expand into. “Buy life insurance for your dead loved ones! You never know when they might come back!” They could borrow stock photos from old horror movies.

(And to make it abundantly clear: I’m not at all angry about this. I think it’s hilarious. I suppose I could rant and rave about how insulting it is, etc., but - well, I just think it’s funny.)

Driving my wife to a meeting earlier today, I ended up behind a transport van, part of a system in my town that provides transportation for senior citizens. On the back of the van, underneath the emergency exit door was this:

Caution! Senior citizens!

Fair enough.

I’ve also seen, quite often (always?) this on the back of buses used to transport kids:

Caution! Children!

Alright, so if you’re driving behind a van with really old people, or really young people, you should be cautious. However, does that mean, then, that if I’m behind a van or bus full of middle aged people, or perhaps people in their mid-twenties, I shouldn’t be cautious? Is it okay, then, to ram the back of the vehicle in front of me? Because there aren’t any toddlers or elders on board? Are people who are beyond the chid years, but not quite yet to the elderly years, inherently less valuable or something?

Obviously, I’m being a bit facetious here, but I think they are rather silly, those warnings. If anything, I suppose they should say Caution! Live humans on board! But can’t that be said for practically all vehicles on the road? In which case, is there really any need for signs on the back of such vehicles in the first place?

Dear Physicians Mutual,

My father, who had life insurance with you, died in 2005. We received the insurance payment from you after we provided proof that my father was, indeed, dead. Kaputt. No more. Pushing up daisies. He had kicked the bucket. So on and so forth. Deceased. (In fact, he was in a similar condition to the parrot in this video.)

Today, I received a letter from you. It was addressed to my father (see above regarding his current, and everlasting, condition). In this letter, you offered a welcoming back to my father. You offered a new insurance plan for him, with discounts, bells and whistles, and fanfare.

Again. Note what I said above. He’s dead. You paid out the insurance for him. How do you propose you put life insurance on someone who’s deceased? While I’d be all for him coming back for a while, I’m fairly confident (100%, in fact) that he won’t be returning.

I think this is a case of one of your departments not knowing what the other is doing. While I’m certainly not angry or upset over the letter (in fact, I found it to be pretty funny), you might want to look into the left arm / right arm coordination. Something is clearly messed up, unless you all know something about dead people that I don’t.

Dear Kroger,

You recently expanded your store in my area a great deal. You added a Starbucks, a Donatos, a sushi bar, and countless new aisles. For you, this is, I suppose, a good thing. More space, more products, (hopefully) more sales. I’m happy for you.

However, was it really necessary to change the location of so many items? Certainly, with the expansion of the store, things couldn’t be in the exact same place. I get that things had to be moved a bit to deal with the new additions.

But do so many things really need to be moved across the frakking store? Not only have some things been moved to a totally new location, miles away from their original spot, some items that I buy normally weren’t to be found at all. Whether they’re hiding somewhere that I missed, or they disappeared in the move, I don’t know.

Please provide an updated floor plan, set out at the doors, for your customers. We’d really appreciate it. When someone is craving banana-flavored chips, it’s quite frustrating to be not be able to find them.

Thanks.