What Were They Thinking? — Houston, We Have a Problem

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

Back in October, I was purchasing a flight to Houston for an event there.  The American Airlines website handily recognized that I had been on their site in the past couple days, looking at pricing.

Having your website follow up on a search query to try and make a sale: that’s nice customer service.

Unfortunately (and you can’t tell it completely from the snippet of the second email shown here), I had completed the purchase of the trip the day before.

Having your website follow up on a search query to try and make a sale that has already been made on that same wesbite: that’s braindead customer service.

What Were They Thinking? — Serving Suggestion #2

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

Yum, that soup looks tasty.  Pity the recipe is for a completely different soup, something with peas and rice rather than carrots and noodles.

(I eventually found and made the carrots and noodles version.  The Thanksgiving turkey carcass kept me in soup for weeks.  Was tasty.)

What Were They Thinking? — Serving Suggestion

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

Dear Safeway Select,

This looks like a fabulous product.  Just one question: what meat is that on the label?  Did you just add chicken, or did you just add shrimp?

Insincerely,
A hungry customer

 

Dream Journal: February 8, 2013

Doesn’t take much to guess what was on my mind with this dream.  I was told a couple days before that an agreement the company I work for didn’t pan out as expected and thus some open positions would be unfilled, contractors would be released, etc.  Nothing specific about layoffs.  (Yet.)

An e-mail went out that there would be layoffs at the company, including one from our group of about 9 people.

This was almost immediately followed by a second message, stating that the dropped person would not be from the Development team (roughly half the group).

In the dream, I wasn’t concerned for my job so much as the extra work that would come based on fewer people in our group.

Most curiously, the entire dream was text based.  No pictures, no people, just online messaging.

What Were They Thinking? — My Snacks Are Better Than Yours!

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

The mind boggles.  Who the Hell tested marketed the name for these?

If you don’t know the meaning of the word “jingoism”, start reading.

Something new for SOSAD (Strangely Orange Snack Appreciation Day / June 21), I guess.  But I don’t think I could stomach (ha!) paying for something with this sort of a name.

What Were They Thinking? — Mmm, Crunchy!

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

Could there be a worse name for a brand of cereal?

(Maybe something implying you are eating body parts or insects, I guess.   “Mmm, more Choco Slugs, please!  Just add milk and they make their own slime!”)

Bait & Switch: Allergy Meds

Here are the bottles of generic Zyrtec allergy pills at my local Safeway pharmacy.

Notice that the packaging is identical except for a red oval and the small print about the number of pills — identical bottle, identical package design.  (In fact, I’ve seen the display several times and never noticed the red oval until now.)  The only difference is the number of pills — 45 vs. 120 — and the $2 difference in the price.  What an ugly bait &s; switch.  (Which I fell for the last time I bought a refill.  45 pills lasts me less than a month.  The pills hold back my allergies for about 6 hours, not 24.)

(What does that tell you about how overpriced the 45 pill option is, when they can almost triple the number of pills while increasing the price less than 10%?  Makes me wish for a 300 pill option, would probably only cost $30.)

(I’m too dumb to go to Costco or Amazon, I guess.  365 pills for $22.  Sigh.)