Dear Yellow Pages, Qwest and Verizon*
I think it’s great that people still use things like a phone book to look up a number. But I a) hate talking to anyone on the phone so much that I let my answering machine get EVERYTHING b) won’t call anyone unless I absolutely have to, and usually know the number already c) don’t mind paying $.50 for 411 if it saves me time and effort rather than hauling out a 6lb book and trying to find the number and searching through 1000 pages for something, and d) I HAVE THE FREAKING INTERNET!!
As you can see, I don’t need any more phone books. I don’t even need ONE, and certainly not the five I’ve gotten in the last month. So please stop leaving them on my doorstep, because then I just have to take them straight to the recycler — which is all the way across the apartment complex. So I have to take the damn things down to my car, drive to the recycler, get out, put the damn things in, and drive back home. I don’t like it. And I bet your poor delivery guy doesn’t like hauling them up the three flights to my apartment either. So please, for my sake, for his sake, stop sending them to me.
Sincerely,
Meljean, your customer who is living in (and enjoying) the twenty-first century.
…actually, Yellow Pages and Qwest, I’m not your customer. So I’m pretty sure tossing 48lbs of paper at my door is illegal or something. Paper harassment.
* I have trouble remembering the final comma in a set of serial commas. This was brought to my attention in the latest round of copy-edits. I also have a tendency to over-semi-colon. Did I mention that my copy-editor rocked? I had to stet very, very few changes, and most of those were style issues or words that I wanted to keep (for example, Mumbai vs. Bombay — Savi says Mumbai, Colin says Bombay, and it fits their backgrounds. I understand the reasoning behind switching them all to Mumbai, but I’m stubborn about dumb little things like that. Or Colin using “forgot” instead of “forgotten”, and Savi “opens” and “closes” the lights instead of turning them on and off.) Anyway. All of her suggestions and changes were great, and smoothed out/clarified some of my more tortured sentences — of which there were several *g*
