Sears

I REALLY DID SEND THIS LETTER TO SEARS.  I REALLY AM NOT ANGRY AT SEARS. THE WRITING REALLY DID DEFLATE THE CONSIDERABLE ANGER I FELT BEFORE DOING THE WRITING.


Hello, there . . . 

In 1979 I purchased a Diehard battery - Sears' Finest!  Around 1979, anyway - I'm getting old and I have trouble remembering my dates.  1979 is pretty close.  It's in the ballpark.  Nobody can say: "1979!  Get the hell out of here!"

Over the course of the next year it failed twice.  Sears stood by its warranty and replaced the battery twice - but did not reimburse me for getting my car jumped, and each replacement battery was prorated, of course, so I had to ante up twice more.   Piqued, I sent a letter detailing my grievance to Sear's Customer Service where it vanished into a great Dome of Silence.

"I will never shop at Sears again," quoth I.

Until June 4, 2014, a day that will live in infamy.  I purchased a bistro patio set and two side chairs at the Pacific View Mall which is nowhere near the Pacific Ocean.  Just to be clear - I realize this is not your fault and I hold you in no way accountable.  The kid that helped me was great.  I returned a few days later and picked up my purchase.  My wife and I - well, my wife mostly - tried to put the bistro table together but were unsuccessful, mainly due to some comically mis-drilled bolt holes.  There was no way that table was going to stand up on its own. Those bolt holes were messed up.

We loaded the entire, partially assembled, completely unpackaged bistro set back into our car and returned it to the store.  The guy at Customer Pick-up was great.  We were directed back to the patio section for the financial part where a very nice young man credited our account and reordered a replacement set.  His manager drifted in and out, swiping his manager's card glumly, with a look of glummy boredom on his glum face.   It would have really, really been nice if he had acknowledged our plight and tried to make it better.

How about:  "We're very sorry for the problem here - could we offer you free delivery and set-up?"  Something, anything.  Look at me and smile - that would have been a big improvement.

A few days later we were notified that our replacement set had arrived.  Back we went to pick up Set Number Two which had a slightly different set of comically mis-drilled holes, a fact we discovered upon returning home.  We did manage to get the table together but the four legs were not striking the same surface at the same time, a very important part of the table function. We had wised up a little and put the table together first - leaving all the other parts in the carton - so it was a lot easier to load up our car and return all of the crap to Sears.  If we were really wise we would have put the table together in the fucking parking lot instead of driving it all the way home again.  At this point we also returned the side chairs - we had no faith in the products that Sears was selling.  We had developed a terrific allergy to Sears' products.

The same guy at Customer Pick-up was great again, maybe even a little sheepish - he really seemed to be on our side, unlike store management.  Again, we had to go upstairs for the financial part.  A somewhat less nice young man had all kinds of problems this time.  First, the bistro part had been coded somewhere, by someone, in some dark hole, as a cash return even though we had paid with a credit card.  The somewhat less nice man couldn't refund our credit card because of this mis-coding and he didn't have enough money in his cash drawer so he had to call someone somewhere who didn't seem to want to stop by.

So we waited.

Fortunately, during the wait we could also attend to the return of the two side chairs.  Since this was the first return for this particular item we foresaw sunny skies and smooth sailing.  Funny, that - the return came up as a Sears' gift card, which you might imagine we had absolutely no interest in touching with the ten-foot pole you probably sell in your tool department.  I have to tell you that if I had needed a ten-foot pole at that point I wouldn't have bought one at your store even though I had taken the trouble to drive back and forth and back and forth until I was frankly getting a little dizzy.  The increasingly less nice young man couldn't process this and had to alert a manager who seemed to have about as much interest in stopping by as the people with my $270, who had not yet arrived.

We waited some more.  

During the wait the slightly nicer young man - he seemed to be rallying!  Maybe he saw the end in sight! - let us know that they had to go through all kinds of drillings and hammerings to get the display bistro sets cobbled together in the store.  This was not information that we could find in any of Sears' promotional material nor was it passed on to us word-of-mouth, off-the-record, before we bought the first of our two identical bistro sets.  It wasn't the kind of information we enjoyed hearing, particularly.  We might have reconsidered our purchase decision had this information seen the light of day.

Both the money lady and the manager showed up simultaneously which made us suspect some shadowy collusion.

"How ya doin'?" the manager said.  He was much less glum than the first manager but also expressed approximately zero interest in our plight.  Again, we would have kept everything if someone had offered free deliver and set-up.

So we got our money back.  So we lost a day of our time what with all of the driving back and forth and back and forth and cursing and fumbling with tools to put together some shoddy merchandise.

I assume that you understand that it will be about another 35 years before I shop at Sears?  At which point I will be about 95 years old and probably not the demographic that you will be most interested in attracting.

Sorry for the length of the letter - I'm posting it on my blog site and wanted to provide as much detail as possible for my readers.

With much sincerity and no hard feelings but with a lot of anti-Sears intransigence.

Fondly.
Little Stevie Seaweed

Seaweed: Advisor

Advise: To give advice to; to offer an opinion, as worthy or expedient to be followed; to counsel; to warn.   

Upon reflection I believe that I've uncovered one instance in my life where I was given unsolicited advice that I found so helpful I was compelled to follow it.   This may be a high estimate.

I can probably come up with 4 or 5 instances of receiving actively solicited advice that I've found so helpful that I was compelled to follow it.  Probably not that many but I'm pretty embarrassed about the low total in the unsolicited advice category so I'm going to exaggerate my worth here.  Lie a bit, in other words.

Here's the disconnect: I'm under the illusion that the entire world - my wife, my family, my friends, my work colleagues, the government, the cops, the clerk at the 7 Eleven - is dying to hear my opinions on how they should live, act, function, behave, and throw down.  

"Please, please, Mr. Seaweed, tell us what to do, in minute detail, using an arrogant and disapproving tone," they say.

I really don't have a clue.

Great Truths and Deep Thoughts

Great Truths.

Truth:  That which is real, in a deeper sense; spiritual or 'genuine' reality; conformity to fact or reality.

I wish I had a bunch of new Great Truths but I do not.  That's probably a good thing because I do much better when I have to remember to do a few simple things - avoiding a long list of many complicated things - which is probably one of my Great Truths, just not the one I want to talk about this morning.

Today's Great Truth, oft repeated and rarely pursued, is this: I don't know what's best for me.  I do know that I don't like pain and I do like pleasure.  The crucial counterbalance to this fairly immature attitude is that I definitely know what actions are good for me and which ones aren't, and that if I do the good actions and avoid the bad ones then the outcomes are good.  Not necessarily pain-free and pleasure-engorged, but good, in the long run.

I think life is a like a tetanus shot.  On the surface I see that I don't have tetanus and don't plan on getting it; I don't know anyone else that has tetanus; and that a tetanus shot sort of hurts.  So, I think, fuck the tetanus shot and bring on the chocolate chip ice cream instead.  Continuing this line of thinking I say: "Let me get this straight: I'm going to drive to a doctor's office so that someone can jab a needle in my arm and then I'm going to give them money for this?  Right."

Reminiscing

I was talking on social media to an old friend from The Old City last night, a guy who got sober about the same time I did.  Like most of my friends who live far away I don't talk to him frequently but we stay in touch.  Like most of my old friends who got sober at about the same time I did we share a unique bond - we can pick up on a conversation as if no time has passed, with a tone and an ease that I find remarkable.  There truly is a sense that I'm chatting with someone who was there with me in the same sinking, bullet-riddle lifeboat lo these many years ago.

When I logged off I reminisced a bit about a couple of New Year's Eves that the two of us and our spouses spent together many years ago.  We've both stayed sober and are still married to the same person that we married in sobriety.  That's a terrible sentence.  We're not married to the same person, of course, because bigamy or whatever the hell that would be called is illegal everywhere but Florida.  We married different people - to the best of my knowledge - and each of us is still married to the person that we individually yet differently married.

Sigh.  I've totally forgotten what I was trying to say.

The point is: we've come a long way, baby.  We've been able to sustain important relationships and hold onto nice possessions and stay out of jail, and he's raised two fine sons.  This was not going to be our fate had we continued to drink.

I have always been jealous of one of his Here's-Why-I-Came-To-The-Fellowship stories, though. To the best of my recollection: "I stopped by a restaurant to pick up some food while thoroughly, absolutely, and completely drunk.  There was a policeman there who made a comment that it would be very, very bad to get behind the wheel of a car if I had been drinking.  With a straight face I said "I'll be alright" before getting back in my car and attempting to drive away.  I made it approximately 25 yards before the lights came on and I was arrested for a DUI."

And we thought the cops weren't trying to help us out.

Sigh

More alcoholism . . . 

I have stayed in touch with a handful of people from The New City - not a million people, but enough people.  I hadn't been there long enough to develop the relationships I had in The Old City but I did have some good friends.  One of these was a guy who had recently been released from prison where he had served a 6 year sentence.  He was a nice man - he did something when he was drunk that the legal system chose to construe in the worst possible light.  He decided to contest this charge -  because he thought it had been blown out of proportion - instead of taking a plea bargain.  The good news is that you may not go to prison at all - the bad news is that if you're convicted you're $#!!ed.

He got some bad news.  

I believed his version of events.  They may not have been true - I've been bamboozled by drunks before - but I think they were.

He had stayed sober in prison and was active in The Fellowship upon his release, surprising me by calling regularly after I had moved.  I thought this showed a real commitment to recovery.  At first the calls were weekly, then they started to drop off.  I didn't hear from him when we were traveling even though my phone plan permitted international calls - I rang him up once and he texted a reply, never a good sign in my book.  I knew he was busy and the time difference was a pain but then again, excuses are a dime a dozen.

I called him a few days ago.

"Well," he said.  "I've got some good new and some bad news.  The good news is that I celebrated 7 years when you were gone - the bad news is that I relapsed."

Very bad news indeed.

I'm a pretty good guy to call if you've relapsed: I'm not big on guilt - we feel bad enough as it is -  but I don't give anyone a pass, either.  I say things like "Welcome back" and "Thanks for telling me" and "What happened?"  I don't tell people that it's okay because it's not okay - it's dangerous as hell.  My friend is on parole.  I can't imagine that someone on parole is permitted to drink, if that was indeed what he did.  If he used drugs I know that's a no-no.

He was vague about where he was in the recovery process.  I hung up believing that he hadn't stopped relapsing which is the most important part of the relapsing process.

This text showed up yesterday: "I've burned everything down and I accept it all."  I sent along an encouraging note but I'm not going to call him until things turn around.  I'm active in The Fellowship; it's what I do.  I'm not saying you have to do it, too, but it's what I do.  It's my belief that contacting someone who continues to drink has never been helpful to me or to that person.

It has been a couple of days of stark reminders.

The Best Man

Some more reflections on the travails of my lawyer friend . . .

We had been out of touch for several years when I ran into him in The Old City.  I was reasonably new to recovery at that point and I was thrilled to hear that he had parlayed a DUI into a trial run at The Fellowship.  Alas, like many of us, he couldn't abide the work and the discipline that our way of life entails.   Drunks don't like to be told what to do and some of us draw a line in the sand.  While we take great pains to allow our members to find their own path to recovery there is, after all, a general framework.  We don't propose that this framework is for everyone - if you can sober up somewhere else by all means do it - but it's kind of what you need to do if you want any success in The Fellowship.

It would like going to yoga class to get in shape and bitching a blue streak about having to do yoga.

He invited me over to his apartment for an evening.  I don't remember too much about that night - unusual for a guy who can recall past events in great detail - but I have no recollection that it was fun or pleasant.  I was with a guy who was adamantly anti-Fellowship and I hadn't been sober long enough to withstand his withering assaults with any equanimity.

He floored me by asking me to be the Best Man at his wedding.  I hadn't yet developed the sense of self that I would have needed to politely decline - the ability to say No is one of the most important skills I've learned in Recovery.  I didn't want to do it, I'll tell you that much.  In retrospect I have to assume that he didn't have anyone else to ask - we burn through our friends when we're drinking.  

As you might imagine the wedding was a slow-motion train wreck.  I knew his parents and siblings reasonably well from our high school days, and they were barely civil.  Clearly furious about something they all stormed out very publicly shortly after the reception began.  As the best man I had to give a toast.  As I walked up to the microphone I had to fend off glasses of champagne and then glasses of sparkling something or the other, ending up with a goblet of water - I didn't want anything alcoholic or pretend-alcoholic in my hand.  I said some things that were probably inappropriate - I hadn't seen the guy in 10 years and anything I could say about his past was not for general consumption, especially with children present.  I don't know a lot about toasts but I don't think you're supposed to curse.

When I was done, sweat pouring off of my face, I glanced over at the band, and saw that the bass player was a friend of mine from The Program.  He smiled and nodded and I was never so glad to get a smile and a nod.  It helped ground me for the rest of the torture-fest.

I say this again: I get comfortable in my recovery sometimes and forget that the disease can take people down.

The Agony

Agony:  Pain so extreme as to cause writhing or contortions of the body . . .; extreme pain of mind or body; anguish; paroxysm of grief. 

I went to my regular men's meeting last night.  This group is a joy - good sobriety and a bunch of guys that I connect with on a personal level.  When I'm in such an environment I can forget what I'm dealing with, exactly.

I was involved in an email string with a group of friends from high school when the name of a classmate came up.  This was a guy that I had spent a lot of time with when I was running and gunning.  While it's up to each individual to decide if they are an alcoholic or not I'll say this: I didn't meet too many people who could keep up with me in the Budweiser department but this guy matched me drink for drink.

He is a lawyer who has had his license suspended for embezzling money from his firm.  Apparently he had also accepted money from clients to represent them in cases that had no legal merit - in effect lying about what their chances for a favorable verdict.

I looked him up on the web.  There was a picture of him taken when he was arrested.  He did not look good.  In fact, he was barely recognizable as the good-looking kid I ran around with.  He had The Look that alcoholics are so familiar with: the bloated, pallid face of someone who has a liver that's doing a lousy job of removing the poison alcohol from the bloodstream.

There was also a link from just a few day ago showing a hearing in front of the State Supreme  Court to determine if he should lose his law license forever.  My friend's lawyer was not in a strong position.  He kept saying things like " while we admit that the facts in this case are without dispute."  He was not trying to get my friend's license reinstated - he was just trying to prevent it from being revoked forever.  And while I'm not a lawyer it seemed to me that the prosecuting attorney was scoring from everywhere on the court: he was hitting threes, posting down low, jamming on big break-outs.

When the choice is between disbarment and indefinite suspension . . . well, those are two pretty crappy choices.  What would you do if you won?  Slap high fives and say: "Yoo hoo - indefinite suspension possibly leading to permanent disbarment in the future?  In your FACE."  I can't imagine sitting in front of a group of my colleagues who had attained the pinnacle of success in my profession, listening to someone explain in excruciating detail how I had committed a series of felonies.  I cannot imagine it.

I couldn't watch the 35 minute video straight through the first time - I kept fast-forwarding, each time ending up at another painful interlude.  It was one of the most upsetting things I had seen in a good little while.