Stop Trying To Upsell Me!
I am sick of it! Everywhere I go, it’s: do you want fries with that; what about the sweater on page 73; do you want this gift wrapped; wouldn’t you rather have a $10 glass of wine, it’s our feature? If I order 8 whoppers, 1 whopper junior, 6 cokes, 3 sprites and 9 orders of fries, that is exactly what I want. I don’t need an apple pie or an oreo cookie pie or even a supersize drink! If I order a glass of the house merlot, I do not want a glass of your very special wine feature that you have surely already wasted enough of my time describing. How about listening to me and giving me what I ordered. These things are bad enough, but at least they are the phrases some poor sap is being forced by his or her manager to say.
Now the credit card companies are on to it. “You didn’t sign up for credit guard the last 3000 times we called, wrote or e-mailed you about it. Are you really SURE you want to pass up this great benefit”? YES I AM! I say it to you now. I know what I want and I don’t need any help deciding. This is particularly annoying when I am forced to deal with it when I call to activate a card or have an account question. I called Discover last week to complain and they actually had the nerve to offer me a really great rate on a balance transfer or I could enroll in credit guard! Thank you very much, but were you listening to me when I said your customer service stinks and I want to close my card. Obviously not. Hence the complaint.
My friend tells me this type of selling works; it must, but not on me. It just pisses me off. Clearly though, the world is populated by morons which is why this practice works. Case in point: I was at Pizza Hut Saturday evening and this lady comes in with her little son. He is running around the restaurant going from table to table screaming “I want to ee” (apparently this means eat, later I discover pp means pizza). He is old enough to say eat pizza and nothing is wrong with him (developmentally any way), but his mother perpetuates this talk by using it herself when talking to him. She asks the waitress for the lunch buffet which the waitress explains is only for lunch and only Monday through Friday from 11am-2pm (keep in mind, this is Saturday evening around 7:30pm). This woman actually asks the waitress, “So when are you gonna set up the buffet”? I swear to god, I don’t know how the waitress didn’t say, around 11 on Monday, but she humored her. After explaining it 3 more times, the woman finally decided to have a personal pan pizza, but she continued to allow her son to run all over the restuarant including into the kitchen. Finally the chef comes out and explains that she is going to have to control her son because it is dangerous (not to mention annoying) for him to be in the kitchen. Her solution to this problem was to scream out her child’s name as loud as possible using different inflections (ie MAL ik, mal IK, MULEEEK, MA lik, ma LIK). This did not solve the problem, and I am willing to bet she does need some one to ask her if she wants fries with that or she’d never know what to order.