Corporate America Beware!

Last June I purchased a new stick of RAM for our desktop. I purchased the RAM from TigerDirect and for those of you that don't know, TigerDirect sells computer parts at discounted prices, which usually involve a mail-in-rebate. The rebates are often handled by a separate company that specializes in rebates and the processing thereof. I jumped through all of the hoops, crossed all my T's and dotted every i, then sent the rebate in. It was processed and accepted in July 2006, now I just wait for the check. So I waited and I waited, and I waited again. It never came, so I sent them a friendly email. No response. So a few weeks later I did it again, no response. Last week, I sent in the fifth email and over six months have passed and they still have not sent out payment. I was starting to get really frustrated.

Yesterday I was going through my email and noticed an email from this rebate company. It was an advertisement about some special rebate that they had going on, blah blah blah. I was getting ready to delete this piece of junk mail when I noticed that it was in the form of a letter and had the name of the CEO signed at the bottom. What a jerk, I wanted to tell him about how I was being mistreated by his company, and here he was sending me spam. After staring at his name for a few minutes a little dim Christmas light came on in my skull. I had an idea.

I have noticed a trend in most companies when it comes to email addresses, that trend being that most corporate email addresses are some combination of the employee's name. So I feverishly wrote an email explaining my plight and how I have yet to get a response from their so called "Customer Service" department. Now lets say that the CEO's name was Testy McTest and he works for rebate.com. I simply addressed this email to: tmctest@rebate.com, testy.mctest@rebate.com, testymctest@rebate.com, and then I pushed the send button. The chances of one of these addresses being right, is somewhat slim. The chances of my email getting through a SPAM filter are very very slim. The chances of a CEO responding to my email are almost non-existent. I didn't expect anything but I felt better anyway.

So this morning I checked my email, waded through all of the emails asking me if I wanted to enhance myself, or invest in this stock, or win a free laptop, when suddenly my eye fell on the sender of one email. It was from testy.mctest@rebate.com! He sent me a quick note, saying that it would be taken care of and that was that! HA! I couldn't believe it, the long shot payed off..... or at least I hope it does, and if it doesn't I know what email address to send my complaints to.

Equality = Equal?

The book that I am currently reading is titled, "Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity" and is written by John Stossel of 20/20. To do a quick summary, this book is a compilation of a bunch of popular myths, propagated by the media, that many of us believe today. In his work as an investigative reporter, John has found out the truth that lies behind what we believe. I must say that even though I am only a few chapters in this book, I would recommend it, but that is not the reason for this post.

In the book John dedicates a whole chapter to the inequalities between men and women. I fancy myself as someone who is semi-enlightened and I agree that women should be treated as equals in our society. While I understand that discrimination still exists, I was appalled by some examples in the book, of people who are fighting this war on sexual discrimination.

There are groups of people who believe with all of their heart that men and women should be exactly equal with no differences whatsoever. For example there is a professor of law at George Washington University, that encourages his students to 'sue' people for discrimination. In his own words it's a "good class project." One of the lawsuits that he encouraged, alleged that having "ladies night" at local bars was discriminatory. For those of you that don't know many bars have a ladies night where ladies can get in at no or little cost. This is to attract women to the bar because statistically speaking, men far outnumber the women when it comes to bar visitations. Men enjoy these nights because it attracts more women, and women are motivated to go because of the significant benefit. Everybody is happy, right? Well, not everyone, because these students and their professor, decided it wasn't right. They filed a lawsuit and they won. Now in Washington D.C. it is illegal to have a "ladies night". So now there are even more lonely men in the bars in D.C.

Another great example is when the students decided that it was discrimination for a hair salon to charge different prices for mens and womens haircuts. To quote from the book,

"Charging women more for haircuts is a common sense adjustment to a real sex difference: Taking care of women's hair takes more time. Not always, but often enough that it's prudent to have different prices. The salons don't price their work to hurt women; they price it based on how much time they spend with female customers. If they did charge women "unfair" prices, the free market would punish them- women wouldn't go to these salons."

He goes on to explain how, that if price regulations did come, then certain salons, might stop servicing women altogether, in order to save costs. Plus the cost of lawsuits are passed on to the customer. The professor and his students see no problem with this and are eager to pursue.

I guess the thing that bothers me the most is the blatant disregard for logical thinking. Anyone with half a brain can see, that in most cases there are in fact differences between men and women. In fact, I am very glad there are. But in their efforts to bring equality to the equation they don't seem to care about that and the fact that they are hurting everyone else. They choose to focus on the mundane instead of perhaps the topics that might make a difference.

So in my opinion, Equality doesn't necessarily mean being exactly equal, it means having the fair chance to do what you choose to do (within reason, criminally speaking, etc.). So choose what you want to do, but don't go charging me thirty dollars for a haircut, because I don't have hardly any hair left.

Gettin' Freaky!!!

While recently watching an episode of Beauty and the Geek (one of my guilty pleasures), they were featuring a book from the bestseller list titled, "Freakonomics" . I thought that it sounded somewhat interesting so I picked it up from the library.

I throughly enjoyed this book. The book is based on research done by an economist that sees the world in a different way. He likes to ask questions that not a lot of people ask, or he likes to find different answers to those questions that we thought we knew the answers to. The book reads very well and even though jam packed with information, I didn't find it boring at all. Here are some of the questions that he asks:

• What do schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers have in common?
• How is the Ku Klux Klan like a group of real estate agents?
• Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?
• What makes a perfect parent?

Even though some of these questions sound very obscure the facts behind it all tell the truth and link it all together. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes facts, odd questions, and wishes perhaps to see things in a different light.

On another note, I hated writing book reports in school, is that what I just did?