Every week I get numerous junk-mail offers from businesses promising me the best, fastest internet connections, the clearest, most desirable cable-television plans, and the most reliable, cheapest telephone plans that use the phone number I already have. “Great!” That’s what I say, but when I call them up to order it from them, they look up my address and tell me that they don’t serve my area, and that I can’t have it. That’s awesome! And what’s even better is that they continue to clog my mailbox day after day with yet better and still even better offers I can’t make use of.
So what’s so bad about littering someone’s life with offers they want but can’t have? Doesn’t absence make the heart grow fonder? Well, maybe it would, if they would eventually come to my area! But what most of these companies are doing (Okay, all of them!) is to make me mad enough by constantly teasing me with stuff I’m not allowed to have that I just want to say: “Fuck you! A pox on all your houses!” I’m totally helpless in all of this, and I can’t get them to stop harassing me with all this junk mail, so this is what ends up happening: I hate them passionately, so much so as to actively want them to fail as companies. Also, I begin to find reasons to enjoy getting the junk mail, like the fact that they’re paying for it, even though they know I can’t get what they’re selling.
So their business plan’s flaws become apparent very quickly: they’re wasting money, they’re making potential customers mad, and they’re teasing people to the point that they begin actively rooting for their failure. That means they’re pushing people to the point where they wouldn’t order their service even if they could get it. Now, isn’t that actively working against their interests? Seriously, from what they’ve been doing to me, I hate them more now than if I found out they were guilty of war crimes! But the funny thing is, they’re doing it to themselves, and they’re paying for it, too! All they’d have to do is check their mailing list next to a map of where they offer service, but I guess that’s too much work. Or even worse, perhaps it’s cheating! But seriously, when people begin to hate these companies, they will only have themselves to blame!
