The Demonstrable Results Of Becoming Irate

Before she got sick, my mom subscribed to everything. Magazines great and small, specialty coffee, catalogs, sweepstakes, the whole rich panoply of American junk mail spewed forth from her mailbox six days a week. I've spent the past year trying to get out from under that deluge, and I've been reasonably successful. Usually a "cancel my account" note dropped in the payment envelope suffices, and though I did have to go a couple of rounds with some particularly pernicious and weaselly magazine subscription services, on the whole it hasn't been that hard to stop the crap cavalcade.

Except for that damned coffee company. For months I wrote "CANCEL MY ACCOUNT" in big red letters on the bills. I marked all their deliveries "Return To Sender" and dropped them back off at the post office. I called customer service and got friendly, perky people to assure me that the account was cancelled and to provide me with cancellation numbers that subsequent friendly, perky people claimed not to be able to recognize. Still the packages came.

Until they didn't.

Last November, I thought they had gotten the message. The packages of Hazelnut Dream and French Roast Very Special ceased. Cool, I thought.

Then today, I come back from running errands and there's a big fucking box from the coffee company on the front porch. "Welcome to [Shitty Coffee Company I Refuse To Advertise For]!" said the big letters on the box. Attached, of course, was an invoice. Now, I know for a fact that I have personally gotten the mail out of the mailbox every single day since I've been taking care of mom. I have to; that's the only way the bills get paid. And I know for a fact that I have gleefully fed to the paper shredder every single beseeching piece of promotional material from Shitty Coffee Company since we canceled the account.

So this company is obviously hallucinating if it thinks anyone at this address ordered this crap.

I get on the horn to customer service and within moments of connecting to an actual human being (a lengthy but tedious process I shan't dwell on here) I am catapulted into full-blown, vein-in-the-temple-throbbing, shouting rage. It went something like this, but with more swearing and exclamation points:

No, I don't want to add to my order. I want to send this Shitty Coffee back to you, at your expense, and have you never contact me again. I will remain on the phone with you until you, or your boss, or your boss' boss makes this happen. No, like I said, I do not want to CHANGE my order. I do not have an order, and I should not have an account. I am not paying for your Shitty Coffee, young lady, and I'm sorry if I'm yelling but your company's idea of customer service is Chinese water torture and I refuse to have anything else to do with you and raising my voice, I've found, is a convenient way of adding emphasis.

No, I do not wish to keep the free coffee-maker. In fact, I wish to glass you in the face with the free coffee-maker. No, I'm sorry, that's not true, I understand you are simply a representative for a larger entity that needs to be glassed in the face.

Long story short, I got another confirmation number, her name, her boss' name, and other information that will prove useless when they send me a second notice next month. But that is then; and now, my rage expended, basking in the almost post-orgasmic euphoria of a customer-service-induced hissy-fit, I think I'll go take a nap.

And I'm totally keeping the coffee-maker.