All Episodes
Previous Next
Sept. 24, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
48:49
Episode 673 Scott Adams: Climate Kids, Trolls, #ChiNazis, Bad Customer Experiences
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hey everybody!
Yes, my sound is different today.
I'm using a different device.
A little technical difficulty, that's why I'm late.
So I'm not using my microphone, I'm just using the built-in microphone.
So your sound quality will be a little bit depressed today.
Sorry about that. But, it's still going to be an amazing day.
A great day, really. And it all starts with a little thing called the Simultaneous Setup.
And it's coming at you now.
All you need is a copper, a mugger, a glass of diamond cellos, a tanker, a thermos, a glass of candy, and a grail.
A goblet or vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And then join me for the unparalleled pleasure of this simultaneous sip.
Go! Sublime!
Okay. Sorry.
Sorry I worried you.
My iPad was...
Out of juice, and I didn't realize it until it was 7.
And it was time to go.
Or 10 a.m. for you East Coast people.
All right, let's talk about some things in the news.
So you're all aware, I think most of you are aware?
I'm doing a week of guest.
I've got a guest cartoonist for a week for Dilbert and Jake Tapper of CNN, who drew Dilbert all this week.
We're going to put together his original art, so we'll both sign it, frame it, and we will auction those off for a very, very worthy cause.
Homes for our troops.
And you can see my pinned tweet to see how to bid on the auction, and I hope that some of you do.
What the Homes for our troops do is they provide and they help facilitate housing for the most seriously wounded vets, so the people who have physical issues that make housing a little more extra difficult.
So it's probably one of the most worthy types of charities you'll ever see.
Now, I would also like to announce that after this, I'm going to complete this week, we'll work through the charity, and I hope we raise as much money as possible.
But I've decided to discontinue any kind of public charity in the future.
Because it became obvious that it's just toxic, in my case.
Now, your experience might differ, but in our current situation that's highly politicized, simply giving my own time and money away to worthy causes creates this weird pushback where people who are just deeply broken,
just a lot of broken people in the world, I come out of, crawl out of every rock, and I'm watching myself being accused of being a Holocaust, a Holocaust denier.
This all just happened in the last 24 hours.
A Holocaust denier.
People saying that I'm pro-rape and alleging that they can point to something that actually says that.
They can't, obviously.
And a number of other things that are so horrible that I'm not even going to mention them.
There's some things that are worse than those things, if you can imagine.
So, you know, I did an experiment recently in which I was working with Bill Pulte, and they gave some of his money as an experiment to Mr.
Gomez, who's one of the best teachers I've ever experienced, who was teaching in the LA area.
And part of the experiment was I wanted to see Specifically, if I could do it in a way that was a mutually beneficial model.
In other words, that the giver would guess something.
The giver in this experiment was me.
And then the recipient would guess something.
In that case, $1,000 to buy school supplies, etc.
And My hypothesis was, or I guess my, that's the wrong word, but the operating assumption was that if you could create a charity model where everyone wins, not just the recipients but the givers, there's something that they get, you know, that makes the experience worth doing, that they would do more of it.
Because more charity is better than less charity.
What happened instead, and I was actually kind of surprised, is that the experience for the giver was so monumentally negative that I would just never do it again.
And if you look through my Twitter feed, you can see what I'm talking about.
It was so toxic that the givers actually talked out of it.
So I know there are people who are going to say, don't let the trolls win!
But you have to also be smart, right?
Charity doesn't work if the giver is crucified.
That's not a model that you want to promote.
So I'm going to take myself out of the game.
The trolls have won.
When I was working with Bill Pulte, they were pretty sure that I was part of a grifter data mining scam.
And now almost every time that I do anything online, some troll comes in and says, well, don't buy his book because he's a charity grifter.
And now that will just like follow me forever as if it's some kind of fact.
None of that happened, right? There was no data mining.
There were no tricks.
It was literally just Bill Pulte Who is a friend.
We've talked countless times.
We were even messaging this morning.
I think Bill's on the periscope right now.
I can tell you with complete certainty that he's just doing it for good reasons.
Like he's trying to make the world a better place.
He's reached that point in his life where he got everything he needed.
Like literally. His life is kind of complete.
It's pretty good. He's just trying to help other people.
Now, Anyway, the toxicity of that was amazing.
Now, in my case, the toxicity is sort of multiplied because we're in a scalp gathering mode.
As we approach 2020, everything is about scalps.
So you'll see all of the...
You're seeing it on both sides.
You're seeing reporters and Democrats and stuff being singled out.
For destruction. So people on both sides of the political spectrum are trying to get as many scalps as they can.
And even charity is fair game, apparently.
I can literally be giving away my time and money to a worthy cause.
And it turns into the worst experience you'll ever have.
I've never had less faith in humanity than I do right now.
I swear to God, I woke up this morning thinking, well, what if climate change does kill us all?
Maybe we had it coming.
That's a little bit of an exaggeration.
Anyway, so now I'm going to be fully participant Participating in the auction.
So I'm not discontinuing any of that.
That's something that's going to be taken to completion.
So if you'd like to bid on any of that art, I'm getting it framed right now.
Then I'll have Jake sign it, and I'll sign it.
And it's going to look pretty cool.
You'd like it on your wall.
So a nice little keepsake.
But, charity...
Didn't work in my case, so I've got to retire from it.
Public charity, obviously.
I'll still try to be as much a positive force as I can, and anything I give will be private, because the world is just the worst place than I ever imagined.
The people in the world are just worse than I ever imagined.
Let me give you a specific example.
Speaking of bad people...
So, Nick Gillespie, you know him from Reason.com.
Now, Reason, as the name applies, they're not trying to be political, they're not Democrats, they're not Republicans.
They are simply taking a place of, well, where does Reason take him?
Literally, trying to use Reason As the platform for deciding what we should or should not do.
Now, that makes them a little unusual, right?
You know, the people who say, hey, how about I'll just not take sides?
Why don't I look at the facts?
So that's what Reason.com is about.
So Nick Gillespie is the famous voice of Reason.com.
And I've done a little work with Nick, did some speaking, so I know him personally from just that.
But Nick was retweeting my blog post, which was a letter to the children about climate change.
I'll talk about that a little bit.
So, here I write this blog post which is literally intended to do nothing but make children feel better.
Right? So that's the point.
I wrote a blog post to make children feel less afraid because this eco-anxiety thing is actually a real thing.
That's a real thing. You know, the reports yesterday was that kids are having actual literal mental issues because adults are telling them that the world is going to be destroyed.
That's a real thing.
And by the way, I can relate to it, because when I was a kid, my generation were told that there was a pretty high likelihood we would die in a nuclear war.
My parents built a bomb shelter in my house.
I grew up in a house with a bomb shelter in the basement.
By the way, I think my siblings might remember that differently, but I remember being told it was a bomb shelter, even if it wasn't.
It wasn't the kind of bomb shelter that would protect you in a nuclear attack, but My father wasn't so good at science.
So anyway, so I can relate to it.
So I write this blog post whose only intention is to inform children that there's a lot going on that is likely to remediate the problem, and it's probably not as big as they think it is, and that humans are pretty good at solving these things, and we're well on the way with nuclear, with Technology that can scrub it out of the air.
It's too expensive, but we could get it done if we needed to, etc.
So, nothing but trying to make the world a better place.
Trying to help some kids.
That's it. That's my whole, the whole thing.
Alright? So, Nick Gillespie tweets this, and true to his, let's say, the Reason.com philosophy, if you will, He prefaces it by telling his audience that I'm not a political partisan.
Now, he miscategorized me a bit, which is worth noting.
So he said that I'm pro-choice, which is not exactly correct.
What I am is pro-me staying out of the whole conversation about abortion, because I don't think I add anything as a man.
And whatever women decide, I'm going to go along with that.
So it's not that I'm pro-choice, it's more that I'm pro-democracy and my own value, personally, is not additive to that conversation.
It's subtractive.
So to be additive, I would like to boost the signal of whatever women as a majority want, whichever way it goes.
So, just correcting the record on that, he also called me an atheist, which I used to be.
But with simulation theory being so promising, I would have to say I'm back into the category of, I don't know, whatever that is.
Whatever it is, if you think the simulation hypothesis is the strongest one.
But that said, Tom Arnold weighs in about me.
I'm just minding my own business.
I wake up in the morning and Tom Arnold is on me.
Like, what the hell?
How does Tom Arnold even know who I am?
And so he responds to Nick Gillespie's tweet.
And remember, Nick Gillespie's tweet is saying, you know, he's sort of the non-typical political voice, basically telling his readers not to make an assumption about what side I'm on and just read the piece.
Tom Arnold unhelpfully adds this comment to Nick Gillespie's tweet.
He says, quote, he's a Trump guy, dude.
He's a Trump guy. Talking about me.
Now, how do you interpret that?
He's a Trump guy.
Doesn't that sort of mean I should be discounted?
Now, what does it mean to be a Trump guy?
I definitely support the president.
But guess what, Tom Arnold?
I also supported all the other presidents.
Democrats. Once somebody is president, I pretty much always support them.
I don't think that's going to change with the next president.
When we get another president, whoever that is, whatever party they are, should that president say, hey, Scott, can you help us out?
I'm not going to say no.
I mean, it depends what it is, obviously.
But, you know, I'm always supportive of the president.
Once our great country votes for somebody and puts them in place, and if they're not...
Breaking the law in any way that I care about.
I'm not talking about trivial things.
But if they're not doing anything egregious, and they're doing the people's work and the economy is humming along, I'm going to be pretty supportive.
It doesn't matter what party you're in.
All right, that said, I replied to Tom Arnold, who said about me, he's a Trump guy, dude, he's a Trump guy, trying to dismiss my opinions And I tweeted back at him and I said, here's a good example of everything wrong with the world in one person.
And that really is everything that's wrong with the world in one person.
Tom Arnold managed to synthesize everything bad about human beings in one tweet about me.
And what specifically I mean is that he only favored the team element of it.
If all that mattered was who I was associated with, I don't want to live in that world.
Do you? Do you want to live in the world where you are limited by somebody you've said is doing a good job?
Like, should that limit your voice, your credibility, your anything?
Tom Arnold is an example of everything that's wrong with the world.
Because imagine the world differently if there were no Tom Arnold-type people being terrible all the time.
I would have definitely listened to Tom Arnold's argument about anything.
In fact, if he had a point about a topic, I would invite him on the show.
I mean, I would have him as a guest.
And, I think you know, I would give him time to talk and fully express his opinion.
I'm all good with different opinions.
I'm all good with me being wrong and somebody showing it in public.
And then I say, whoa, good job.
Showed me wrong. Let me change my mind right here in public.
I'm pretty flexible about ideas and being productive, even if they're not exactly the way I would have gone.
But as soon as you try to condense all the complication in the world into, he's a Trump dude.
He's a Trump guy.
Like, that should define me.
That should limit what I can and cannot do, per Tom Arnold.
So when I said, here's a good example of everything wrong with the world in one person, Tom Arnold then tweeted back, and I quote, Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Nice try, boys.
Hashtag be best.
I don't know exactly what that meant, but I apparently decided to bow onto that conversation.
Let's talk about something else.
On CNN, Stefan Collinson, who's one of their opinion people, a big anti-Trumper, he wrote this as part of a larger piece, quote,"...the storm over Trump's self-admitted call for Ukraine's president to investigate his potential 2020 election foe Joe Biden may turn out to be his most perilous political scandal." This might be his most perilous political scandal.
To which I say, if that were my most perilous political scandal, I'd be pretty happy about that.
That's it? The most perilous political scandal is a phone call he made in front of lots of witnesses doing the job of the president?
Breaking no rules, breaking no laws, completely within his job description, and protecting American elections, which is, you know, part of his job description.
If that turns out to be his most perilous political scandal, that would be pretty, pretty good.
Pretty good, let me say.
All right. So I referred earlier to my blog post I wrote.
So I wrote a blog post.
You can see it in my Twitter feed somewhere near the top.
It should probably be in the top ten at this point.
It's getting pushed down a little bit.
But it looks like it's going semi-viral, which is good.
And what people are saying is that, well, a lot of people are saying it's the best thing I've read and it's wonderful and they're tweeting it around and I like all that.
But I think that I accidentally wrote something for adults by trying to write something for children.
Because what I was trying to do is break down the situation, climate change was the topic, and the risks of it, into the simplest, you know, quick statements about a number of topics from, you know, the new technology being less risky to, you know, there's not a big problem with waste to economics and stuff.
I tried to keep it as simple as possible.
But there is sort of a natural...
We'll limit to how simple you can get on that kind of a topic.
You know, you can simplify to the point of being ridiculous and nobody learns anything.
So I simplified as much as I could, trying to make it sort of a 14 and older thing, but not every 14-year-old, sort of the Greta Thunberg type of, you know, 14 and over, in the sense that she's part of the, I assume, one of the smarter kids.
So I was trying to write something for the smarter kids and maybe something that adults could read to them.
But I think I missed my mark because a lot of adults were noting that it seemed perfect for them.
So that's a good lesson.
There's no limit to how simple you can make writing.
Well, there is a limit.
I mean, you could simplify it to the point where it's just inaccurate.
But just simpler is better.
It's just... There just is no way around that.
When it comes to writing...
If you can simplify it without losing its point, do it.
Now, you may know that I have largely avoided tweeting and talking about 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, who's now world famous as a climate change advocate.
Now, partly because she's a kid.
And it just, I'm an adult, and I just don't feel comfortable talking about a kid, especially in this context, because I wouldn't be able to criticize her in the normal way.
You would criticize an adult, and therefore it's just not productive to bring her into the conversation.
Secondly, I didn't realize until just this morning that she's talked publicly about her Asperger's and has noted that she considers it sort of a superpower because one of the aspects of that is it allows you to dig more deeply into a topic which she's done.
Now, I probably have More experience with non-neurotypical folks, Asperger's being the more common name for that, than most people.
Probably a solid 20% of my fan base is on the spectrum somewhere.
When I go to do events, I am surrounded by non-neurotypical people and I love them.
I absolutely love them.
The Asperger's, the non-neurotypical people.
Trust me when I say that.
It's a community which I have special affection for.
Because they have many delightful qualities which you cannot overlook.
One is that they have a hard time telling a lie.
If you're on the spectrum, if you're like Greta, you have Asperger's.
You're non-neurotypical.
I think I prefer that. I like the neurotypical for the common folks, people like me.
And I like non-neurotypical for that community.
I just like that term better.
But they do have some superpowers.
So when she talks about that, that's not even an exaggeration.
Compared to us, her ability to dig deep and concentrate is probably pretty awesome.
Likewise, they have a quality which they tend to be brutally honest, just brutally honest.
I like that.
I mean, it can be painful, can be a challenge, but I kind of like it, right?
There's something you can respect about that.
So, I'm a big fan of the non-neurotypical environment, and to be fair, they're big fans of Dilbert quite often, and so it's a mutual love.
So, I have a special affection for Greta that many of you do not share.
So let me start with that.
So I have an affection for her because she's a child.
She means well.
And I believe that everything that she says, partly because of the non-neurotypical element, I believe she's an honest player.
Now, honest doesn't mean right, of course, but I believe that it's almost incapable for her to be dishonest, because that's part of her superpower.
But let me complete the thought here, because she's, you know, like a lawyer at trial, she has introduced this variable into the topic.
It's not anything I would have ever introduced into a topic, but she did.
And quite rightfully calls it a superpower.
So as long as we keep our heads on straight, I think we can talk honestly about this because she does.
And I think that's fair.
She would probably appreciate it.
But here's the thing that has to be said.
Greta is not a scientist.
She is a person who has done a lot of reading.
And She has developed a point of view that is not so much based on the science she's done, because she hasn't done science, but rather her ability to trust some people over others.
And one of the elements of being non-neurotypical is a little extra difficulty reading people.
That's very much part of the definition of what it's like to be non-neurotypical.
Because the neurotypicals can look at other neurotypicals and say, well, you're probably thinking and acting the way I would.
So that gives you a little insight.
You're like, well, if I would have flinched, then I see you flinching, that probably means something.
If I would have grimaced then, and I see you grimace, that probably means something.
Because if I were grimacing, you know, and I see that grimace.
And it has to be said.
It just has to be said. Because it's now introduced into evidence.
This is nothing I would have talked about, except that it's already introduced into our conversation.
But there are two things you don't want to rely on.
When you're trying to tell who's telling the truth and who's credible on climate change.
Number one would be a child, right?
We were all children. We can all compare how much we knew when we were 16 to how much we know now.
It's not the same, is it?
Sixteen-year-olds have partially developed brains, all of them.
I'm not talking about Greta, I'm talking about all children.
Scientifically, conclusively, they have undeveloped brains.
So the first thing you should not pay attention to is someone whose science has conclusively, there's no question about this, there's nobody on the other side of what I'm going to say, their brains are partially developed.
Secondly, if the specific problem is you're trying to figure out which group of disagreeing people to believe, I'm not sure you want to go with the non-neurotypical opinion on that.
Because the non-neurotypical should, just by definition of what that means to be non-neurotypical.
Here, I don't mean this as an insult.
Remember, I have great affection for this community, as they tend to be big Dilbert fans, and I love them a lot.
Spend tons of time with non-neurotypical people, and I can say I enjoy it pretty much every time.
You have to say, And I think the community would say this of themselves, that one of their challenges is reading people.
So they can't tell when you're lying as well as they would like to, and they're a little bit distrustful of things that they should not be distrustful of, because that's the one thing where their superpower doesn't work.
It's sort of like their kryptonite.
So I would agree with Greta, who says it's like she has a superpower with her Asperger's.
That's a real thing. I believe that her power to concentrate and focus is really powerful, and I'm glad she recognizes it and uses it.
But I'll just put that out there.
All right. Kyle Bass.
Who's a big anti-China guy that I follow and you should too, because it's a real interesting voice on China's badness.
He used a hashtag today.
Well, I'll tell you why first.
He showed a video which appears to show China with hundreds of Uyghur minority folks who have their hands bound and their heads covered, sitting in rows and being let off to camps.
Think about this.
Hundreds and hundreds.
It's an actual video.
And it looks real.
I mean, you can't trust even video these days.
But, you know, my judgment is it's probably more real than not.
And it looks like an actual Nazi roundup.
Now, we in America like to call everybody a Nazi.
In fact, little Greta was being compared to a Nazi online because she has pigtails and there was some Nazi icon that had pigtails.
Totally unfair. Totally unfair.
You know, just like I rail against people saying that Trump is Hitler because it just minimizes what a Hitler is.
It's not even close.
Likewise, if there's something about Hitler that reminds you of Greta, that's not fair.
Can we keep Hitler out of normal political conversation?
But I'm going to make an exception for China.
If you are literally rounding up a minority, and it's on video, and we can see it, we don't have to guess anymore, assuming that video is real.
I think it is. We're watching it.
We're watching another Holocaust.
It's an actual, literal Holocaust.
Now, you might say they're not killing them, but they're certainly not letting them live a free life like a regular person.
So they're killing them in a sense.
Their hearts might still be beating, but they're basically taking their lives away.
You could argue that, well, that's not as bad as the Nazis.
Well, not yet, but how many of them are there?
Yeah, and then there's the question of organ harvesting.
I don't know much about that, but it doesn't sound good.
So I saw this hashtag, which is hashtag China with Z-I-S added, so it becomes Chi-Nazis.
And I thought, well, that's clever.
And so I'm watching...
The actual current video of a country that we're doing trade with, who is shipping us fentanyl and killing tens of thousands of our people and doing nothing about it, while we're asking them to stop it, doing nothing about it, at the same time we're watching a video of them literally going full Nazi, literally rounding up a minority, handcuffing them, taking them to camps, trying to snuff out an entire minority.
We're watching it. Like, actually, there's video.
You know, I have to admit, I've been hearing about the Uyghurs and was troubled by it, but when you see it, Your brain just goes, you know, because as I've told you so many times, the visual element just completely reorients your head.
When something's a concept, it's easy to ignore.
It doesn't have purchase in your brain.
But as soon as you put it in a picture, damn!
That picture, again, it must be demonstrated to our satisfaction that that's a real video and we know what we're actually seeing.
It's not some kind of mistake.
But assuming that's real, we have to discontinue all business with China, period.
Otherwise, we're just abetting the Nazis.
And by the way, Israel, step up!
Israel, step up!
Right? You know, how long have we had Israel's back?
A lot, right?
The United States? Part of it, well, a big part of it, is because the Holocaust, you know, I guess the idea of it, the history of it, the impact of it, has a big impact on our current situation and how we see things.
But I think Israel probably needs to say, we know what Hitler looks like, and there it is.
You know, you've heard the saying, never again.
It's happening right now.
Never again.
It wasn't good enough.
Now, they're not rounding up Jews, but I'll bet they would.
If there were an equally sized Jewish community in China, I assume there's not.
I just, I don't know. But I assume there's not.
Don't you think they'd get rounded up?
Yep. Absolutely.
Because they would have a belief system that was incompatible with the bosses, I guess.
Now, it could be that the Uyghurs may have some Sharia thoughts that give them a little extra reason for the Chinese government to be worried.
But their worry cannot justify rounding up an ethnic community as they are.
At this point, I would say if we do make a trade deal with China, we should be ashamed of it.
We should feel...
What's the deepest level of shame that you should or could feel?
I believe the deepest level of shame would be to let the Holocaust happen again right in front of you.
Can you think of a deeper shame than that?
What? Reinstituting slavery?
What would be a deeper shame?
Than doing business with a company that's sending you fentanyl by the barrel, killing tens of thousands of people right in front of us.
They're not even pretending to stop it anymore.
At the same time, they're going full holocaust.
We're going to trade with them?
Seriously. Would you?
Would you ever buy another Chinese product if you knew how to avoid it?
Alright, so I'm going to press again.
We need to have a law absolutely requiring at least Amazon, maybe Walmart or something, at least the big companies, we need to be able to label their products so that we know what is coming from the Holocaust regime.
China is a Holocaust regime now.
I'm just going to say it.
They've gone full Holocaust.
Right in front of us.
Right under your nose.
And now we've got actual video of it.
So you can't pretend anymore.
You know, you can't put it off anymore.
We can no longer do business with China.
I don't support any trade deal.
Period. Under their current conditions.
All right. Let me tell you about really, really, really bad customer service.
You know, every company has these customer loyalty programs.
And sometimes they just help you.
The company gets something from it.
They get your data, your purchase data as they can track you.
You don't care because it helps you.
You get discounts. Everybody wins.
But I'm going to call out one company that has the most abusive customer program I've ever seen.
It's CVS. Now, CVS is an enormous business.
It's one of the biggest companies in the country with their drugstore product.
Now, the stores themselves are excellent.
The employees seem good.
So I'd say good product, good store.
Employees are great.
So I have lots of good things to say about CVS, and I frequent them often.
But they have a customer loyalty program that is designed, it seems, to screw the customer.
And I can't leave that store without being incensed.
100% of the times I shop at CVS, I'm happy I got my little products.
And by the time I'm walking out the door, I'm fuming with hatred of them.
Because of their customer loyalty program.
They have a customer loyalty program that makes me hate them with the heat of a thousand suns.
Here's why. I've been going in there for years, and when I pay, they'll give me a receipt, and this is not an exaggeration, that's six feet long, meaning that I can hold it, you know, way above my head.
And it would reach the floor.
There is enough text on it with potential discounts, if you buy this $2 off, etc., that you don't want to throw it away.
Because it actually has monetary value.
But there isn't really anywhere you can store it, and you don't want to spend time looking through it.
Okay, here's the one, and clipping it out, which I tried to do for a week just as an experiment.
I tried to see if I could comply with their customer service method and get a good job.
So Christine and I would go through them, and we'd find the little one that's like the $2 off.
Now, I know what you're saying. I don't need two dollars off, right?
That's not the point. The point is how it makes me feel as a customer.
Now, they've given me this little piece of paper that if I cut it off, so now I have to go home and do work, right?
I'm like using scissors.
I'm cutting it off. Now I have to store it.
Then I have to remember to bring it to the store.
And where do you store this little ripped off piece of paper?
And what about all the other discounts that I could have used?
If I buy Visine, that's, you know, that was one of the things.
And if I buy some soap, that was another discount.
Do I put a three ring binder together so that I'll remember all my discounts and then leave it in my car just in case I go to CVS? So I tried this new plan of trying to comply, trying to comply with their program so I could get those discounts.
Five trips in a row.
I walked past the clipped-out discounts that were sitting in my garage so I would not forget them.
Walked past them, got in my car, drove to CVS, and then flew into a rage because I was paying more than I needed to because my coupons were left at home.
Five times in a row.
Because I'm not going to keep them in my car.
And I can't remember to pick them up.
So I have this just fuming rage at CVS because of their system.
So they made the mistake of sending me emails after my last several purchases asking me for my opinion on their customer service.
So I took a few minutes to give them my opinion on their customer service.
Now to their credit, I got a response.
So yesterday their customer service people wrote back very, I'd say promptly, professionally, again, full credit to that group.
So whoever wrote back to me, good job.
And actually offered a specific suggestion and then also offered to talk to me.
So I did email back and I'm going to talk to them today if we connect.
Don't know if we'll connect yet.
But then she suggested in her email that all I had to do was tell the cashier to transfer me to a digital receipt.
And I said, what?
All I have to do is ask the cashier to transfer me to permanent digital receipts, and then I'll have it all digitally, and I'm thinking, problem solved.
Once it's digital, all of my manual effort of scissors and remembering to take and everything is gone.
All they'll have to do is pair my earned discounts, because they'll know who I am.
They'll know what discounts I earned.
They'll pair it with my purchases.
Bam! Perfect.
But why didn't they ever tell me that, right?
So I go into the store that same day just to test it.
And I said to the cashier, and by the way, here's the other good thing that CBS is doing.
Several of their workers, at least locally, I think are in their 80s.
So it seems that they're consciously hiring senior citizens.
And they're doing great work.
You know, all of the—and I'm not—I'm serious.
I think about 80, you know, late 70s, maybe 80 years old, some of their cashiers, and they're doing great work.
So good for them. So CBS—I have a lot of good things to say about CBS, but not this.
And so here's the kicker.
I say to the cashier, I'd like a digital receipt.
Can you sign me up for that?
Very efficiently, she says, yes.
Goes to her little machine, pushes a few buttons, and then she says, with no effort whatsoever, she goes, now you're on digital receipts.
So you'll get an email of your digital receipt every time Every time you buy something instead of the paper.
I'm like, that's great.
And I go, and then what do I do with them?
Do I have to print them out?
Because I'm thinking, okay, that only solved a little bit.
I'd still have to print it out and cut it with scissors.
How does that work? She goes, no, no, no.
You don't have to print it out.
You don't have to print it out.
I'm like, oh, all right.
Now we're talking. She goes, the email will have a link, and then you can click the link, and that will connect those purchases to your account, and then those discounts will be available to you.
And I said to her, why is that step necessary?
You know who I am, so you know what I have purchased and what I've earned in discounts.
You also know Exactly what I'm buying next time.
That data will all be visible at the same time.
Why is it I have to click that link to make my discount effective?
And so I said to her, you're doing that to make me forget, right?
That's the whole point of it.
The whole point of it is to make me not do that, to lose my fucking discount.
You absolute cunts.
I didn't say that.
Those are the things I was thinking in my head.
I was saying, I've never been more angry at your fucking company.
CVS, you pieces of shit.
It could not be more obvious that your entire game is to make us not use your goddamn fucking discounts.
You're doing it right in front of me.
You're doing it in my face.
You're abusing me.
And you have a fucking monopoly on the goddamn...
Drug stores around here, so I can't even use anything else, really, not in a practical way.
CVS owns my old goddamn town.
You fucking assholes!
You fucking assholes!
All right? Does anybody else have exactly that same feeling when you go to CVS? Am I wrong?
Don't you have the same feeling?
This is actually just customer abuse.
And it's so in your face, like they're abusing you so obviously.
I can't do anything but have red-hot hatred for their brand.
And keep in mind, everything else they do is pretty darn good.
The employees?
Lovely. I've never had a bad experience with an employee there.
Their store layout, the products, even the prices.
Not bad. But man, Man, their customer abuse program, they need to be all fired.
I mean, everybody there needs to be fired.
Now, let's be honest. The number of discounts that people fail to claim, given the size of that company, let me put a number on it for you.
$100 million a year maybe?
I'm just guessing because it's a multi, multi-billion dollar company.
How many people like me don't bring in their receipt and hate that fucking company every time it happens?
Not the only one.
Let me give you an analog to that.
I used to work at the local phone company.
One of our most profitable lines of business was people not paying their phone bill on time.
Because they would be penalized.
So we would make it not that easy to pay your phone bill on time.
We could have made it, you know, there were some plans floated to make it a little easier to pay your phone bill.
What did we say in Pacific Bell, not me personally?
Well, we don't want to make it that easy to pay your phone bill on time.
Because we make $100 million a year on late fees.
And then they still pay their phone bill, because you have to pay your phone bill.
You don't want to lose your phone. Eventually you're going to pay it.
So I do know from the inside that companies do sit there and say, well, we don't want to make it that easy for the customer.
Let me give you another one.
Apple. I told you how happy I was with Apple's packaging.
Great customer experience unwrapping my iPhone.
But they don't do everything right.
Have you ever tried to cancel a subscription to an app on your iPhone?
Most of you say, yeah, I have.
I just go in there, and I go into my settings, and I hit my profile, and I look up subscriptions, and I look for the one, and I cancel it.
No problem. How many people do you think know how to go in and cancel an app subscription?
I had to Google it.
I didn't know how. And I've had apps that have auto-renewed time after time because I was just sort of too busy to figure out how to cancel a subscription.
I didn't think it was hard, and it wasn't hard.
▲
Export Selection