Archive for April, 2010

Do you enjoy the go?

The other day Charmin, sellers of bathroom tissue (what us normal people call toilet paper), encouraged me to “Enjoy the go.” 

When I first saw the commercial, I posted my confusement on facebook. A few people didn’t quite believe it was true. I don’t blame them. I don’t lie, but I am, on occasion, a smart-ass. Heck, if I hadn’t been able to rewind and pause live TV, I wouldn’t have believed me myself.

Enjoy the go, eh? I guess, Everybody Poops but not everybody really enjoys themselves?

Don’t know ’bout you, but I don’t generally approach a powder room door with an expectation of balloons and confetti falling from the ceiling. Not that the loo is an un-happy place but, you know, it ain’t Disney World, people.

I saw the tagline again yesterday, and, curiosity got the best of me. I googled it. And I’ve learned more about this campaign—a campaign that someone thought up and (instead of just amusing colleagues with fake mockups) shared with a client, that someone reviewed, that someone presented to the boss, that someone approved and spent a lot of money on.

Enjoy the go is part of Procter & Gamble’s “Charmin-branded bathrooms. . . . multi-channel campaign. . . . [which] includes a microsite, a mobile application, social media and charity components.”

That sentence alone is a preposterous and euphemistic gigglefest.

But there’s more.

Their bathrooms include extra, giant toilets. For “photo ops.” They do a daily blog. Yes, they publish a journal about what goes on inside their bathrooms. 

Please insert your own pretend bathroom blog post here. I tried. But I just couldn’t do it without slipping to a level of humor that would only have been appreciated by my 12-year-old nephew and my cousin Denny. And a Lady always edits.  

I vow to you Life Preserver readers:  I will never blog from the smallest room in the house.

Last but not least, Charmin offers consumers (a word choice I would have deliberately avoided in such a promotion) the benefit of being entertained by the Charmin Go Team. No, they are not there to monitor your performance or cheer on your efforts. They are there to perform musicals.

Yes, I said musicals. Inside the bathrooms.

Now, I believe in the beauty and magic of dreams as much as the next old-fashioned starry-eyed romantic, but if you’ve packed your little bag and run off to the big city and your break finally comes and it’s doing song-and-dance in a public bathroom, it might be time to become a hooker.

Okay folks. Looks like intermission is almost over and the bottle of champagne I keep in the tank is perfectly chilled. I gotta go.

April 22, 2010 at 11:51 am 3 comments

Yes!

About three weeks ago, I was sitting on an airplane with my work laptop. Never used the computer on a plane before; have always been more of a book person when flying. But, it was going to be a long flight, and I wanted some variety. So, I turned on the work-Mac, slipped in my ear phones, and sat back to enjoy some music.

But then the music stopped, and the screen went blank as the computer turned itself off. I turned it back on and got one of those international no symbols, with the circle and the slash?

Now, those of you who know me know I am a bit technology-challenged. You likely will not be surprised by the following confession.

I thought this meant I could not use the computer on the airplane. Not as in “you don’t have permission” but as in “we’re too far from earth or some setting is searching for something and can’t find it up here in the clouds.”

Those of you who are not technology-challenged know exactly what horror that symbol announced. But, for the sake of those like me, I’ll explain. The circle stands for “O crap!” and the slash is representative of the sound “pfft.”

My hard drive was gone.

I lost a lot of stuff. Including:

  • About a thousand or so family photos, slides, and movies that I spent about 6 months gathering and digitizing last year. Had been meaning to get those onto a DVD . . . and the road to hell is now paved with my baby pictures.
  • Every setting, add-on, preference, bookmarked web page, etc.
  • A few work files. (Computer gods be praised, I had done a backup not too long ago.)
  • All of my itunes, about 180 purchases and about 10 hours of uploaded (or is it downloaded?) CDs.

I thought my tunes would still be accessible because I had itunes (with the same login) on my home pc.

O crap!

I thought, well, they’ll be on my work backup server.

And pfft!

I figured, well, these were purchased electronically, and the company will replace them. Uh . . . not according to their Help page.

The Official Policy is, basically, “Tough beans you should have done a backup you moron.”

To my credit, I have done itunes backups previously, when leaving a job or changing computers. But . . . it’s been a while.

Well, after trying the click-here-ho-ho-try-this-ha!-how-bout-here?-omg-snicker-she’s-still-trying!-heh-heh snipe hunt for over an hour, I figured that was it. But decided it couldn’t hurt to send a note to someone.

I snagged the next Contact-Us email address I found (which was completely unrelated to my question) and sent a plea. I got one of those immediate emails that say things like “We got your question! And we’ll get back to you,” which younger, less cynical types might feel pleased or even hopeful about.

But I am in my mid(ahem)-forties. It’s been quite a long time since Hope swung it’s little hobo stick over a shoulder, flipped me off, and strolled out the door.

But.

Get this.

I heard back from Apple the very next day. Got a very friendly, very helpful note from a customer service rep (who seemed to be a real person) that demonstrated empathy for the problem, provided easy-to-understand instructions, and granted me a one-time deal of replacing all of the music purchases I had lost. FOR FREE. Couple of clicks and it was all downloading.

I am still a bit astounded.

In this day and age when overworked-ness or over-lawyered-ness or budget cuts or just plain bad manners have amped up the Useless Jagoff Meter in nearly every aspect of so-called service, there is a company—that already has my money—that helped me? Even though their Policy says otherwise? And they did it for free, without secretly adding an automatic deduction from my checking account somewhere deep in the fine print? And they were nice about it?

This my friends is what I call the international symbol for yes:

April 14, 2010 at 12:49 pm 7 comments