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March 5, 2009
panning for gold
"Hi, John," said a vet I barely remember visiting—once, for eye drops—"I noticed that Dex is getting old enough to be spayed. We generally like to do that at six months, and as luck would have it, we're having a special on spaying this month. Can I make an appointment for you?"
"No thank you. I'm planning on doing it myself."
A sale?
In choosing a vet, Dex and I have had a few false-starts, so several vets know she exists. Each of them has cold-called me about spaying (and microchipping) her. One of them twice. It seems as though I'm the sediment in some bubbling stream, and Dex's ovaries are sizable nuggets of gold.
The economic downturn has made salesmanship extra-obnoxious. The number of catalogs going straight from my mailbox to the trash can five feet away has doubled. Ditto the spam in my Inbox. When I recently bought sunglasses and picture-framing and an oil change, the aggression was undisguised. The merchants would upsell me, goddammit, or die trying. Allow me to vote for the latter.
In Time magazine, there's an article about how the recession is impacting and changing the restaurant business. Out are pretentious, expensive dishes; in are comfort foods. Out, bottled water; in, tap water. And so forth. I read the article in a restaurant. Or I tried to. I was interrupted constantly by various staff.
An aside: when I'm stressed out, one of my favorite means of decompressing is to dine alone. I want to read, have food and drink brought to me, and not have to attend to the needs of a human being, including myself. When I'm in this zone, chatty staff is decidedly unwelcome. They make me stabby. I'm paying to relax. I can be irritated for free.
So I'm in the restaurant, ducking and weaving "where do you live?" and "my name is Erin, what's yours," trying to get through the bloody article. And then I read a quote from a restaurant owner who said that during a recession, the staff has to turn dining out into a relationship between staff and customer. No more snooty waiters, he says. The staff must chat every customer up, ingratiating themselves into repeat patronage.
So you think, motherfucker, I thought. I crumbled the magazine into a roll and waited for someone to beat with it.
posted by john at 8:21 AM • permalink