Before I jump into this week’s tale from my misspent youth, a little rant about “automatic renewal” of “rewards programs”. Especially when it comes to cancelling said automatic renewal.
Several years ago I signed up for the family VIP program at Roadrunner, a chain of athletic shoe stores, to get a 20% discount on some custom orthotic inserts for my work shoes. Working at Disneyland I’m on my feet for 8 hours per shift, and I need the extra arch support.
Deb and Amanda occasionally purchase shoes there, but I needed solid black or solid brown shoes, which they don’t carry. We do so little business there that our available “rewards cash” for the last year is only about $34.
When I got an email today notifying me of an auto-renewal fee of $69.99 I went to the Roadrunner website to cancel.
After much searching around I found an obscure paragraph in a FAQ buried three pages deep that said you had to call a phone number to cancel unless you live in California or New York, where you can cancel online, with a link that took me to…
The exact same page I’d started on. If there’s a way to cancel from that page I couldn’t find it, and I’m not exactly tech ignorant.
I called the number and spoke with a very nice woman who cancelled my account and let me know that our $34 of rewards cash was good until November 5. Deb’s planning on applying that some new shoes there, then as far as I’m concerned we’re done with Roadrunner. I’ll be looking for ortho inserts elsewhere.
It should be just as easy to cancel an account as it is to set one up in the first place.
I have spoken.
Back to our original story, which is already in progress:
While I was parking other peopes cars nights and weekends I was also attending Long Beach State College. After my very expensive stay at San Diego State and terrible academic performance Dad wanted me to live at home where he could “keep an eye on me”.
I did fairly well during the first part of the first semester, but I got distacted by a very nice looking young lady in one of my classes. She had a notebook with hippie-style flower stickers with red, white and blue stars and stripes on them.
She told me they were available from an organization called Young Americans for Freedom that she was active in, and invited me to a meeting. I knew YAF was a conservative organization, and I was and still am pretty liberal, but she was really good looking, so I met her and a bunch of others in the Student Union.
The Long Beach State organization was run by a guy named Dana Rohrabacher. Dana was a force of nature. He liked having me around as his “token liberal”. I never got anywhere with the young lady, but I did participate in some interesting debates at the Student Union and later in the evenings at Dana’s penthouse apartment overlooking the cliffs at Belmont Shores.
Eventually he became a US Congressman who prompted Kevin McCarthy to comment, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” in 2016.
But I digress…
Unfortunately all this sitting around discussing politics during the day and parking cars at night cut into my class time and study time.
It didn’t help that I was awkward and shy and to timid to actually go to the computer center and get an account so I could do the required coding for an Assembly Programming class. It was too much for me so I dropped the class.
At that time, as an undergraduate I was required to take a Physical Education class. I decided to take a Conditioning class to see if I could acutally grow some muscles. Luckily I had a free period afterwards because I had to take a nap after the class.
At that time I was driving a ‘59 Plymouth Suburban station wagon. If you put down the back seat and the third row seat there was plenty of room for a sleeping bag. This led to some careful questioning from Mom. Man, did I wish her suspiscions were true.
But I was taking my post conditioning naps alone, dammit.
I don’t remember what other classes I signed up for, but I do remember that in the Spring semester the only two classes I passed were Archery (much easier than Conditioning) and Biology. This did not go over well with the Parental Units.
I spent the summer moping around the house when I wasn’t parking cars. At one point Dad sat me down and asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I had no idea. I suggested I could be a beach bum. “In that case you’re welcome for dinner once a month, otherwise you’re on your own.” said Dad.
Near the end of the summer I was reading the comics page in the newspaper and half-watching a beauty pagent on TV when suddenly all I could see was a Hughes Aircraft Company employment application about an inch from my face.
“Filll it out!” Dad said.
I did. Kip had been working a summer job at Hughes after graduating High School, but he was leaving for college at Cal State Los Angeles and they needed a warm body to take his place.
Thus began my first non-crappy job.
More next week.
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost
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Thanks.