Forgotten Heros of the Empire

When Star Wars fans speak of the Empire, they invariably think of the big name bad guys: Darth Vader, General Tagge, the Emperor, and for those of you who like the new trilogy (weirdo-freaks), the Darth Mauls, Chancellor Palpatine, Jar-Jar.

But to think of the Empire in purely evil terms does a disservice to lesser known heros of the Empire; those brave men who risked death for standing up for what was right. (side note - why was everyone in the Empire a man? Was it chauvinism, or something else.... For that matter, why were they all British, too? Alas, I digress....)

Today, we celebrate one of these lesser known heros of the Empire: Chief Bast

The Chief, played by Leslie Schofeld, had apparently only one line, but it was a critical. Much like Rosencrantz and Guilderstern, his screen time was limited, but his role proved critical. For it was Chief Bast who analyzed the Rebel's plan of attack and realized that yes, there is a danger.

Was he rewarded for his initiative? No. Was his warning headed? No. Was his tact in bringing up such a delicate matter appreciated? Hell no. For his troubles, he recieved nothing but scorn a verbal lashing from General Tagge for overestimating the Rebel's chances.

We think it is time for Chief Bast to be praised for displaying the initiative, intelligence and discretion that all good officers should demonstrate. Had you only been successful in warning others of the danger, we might not ever have to have seen an Ewok.

Chief Bast: We salute you!

an impossible uphill battle

Do you know a company is saying when you call in and you have to navigate through their phone system just to get your question answered? It says, our time is more valuable than yours.

They might as well say, sorry customer, but we don't have time to waste talking to you; we would rather you navigate a complicated phone tree, which is set up to serve our purposes and not yours, and if you are lucky, we might only subject you to 15 minutes of listening to lame marketing promotions you are going to ignore but we are hoping that if you are subjected to enough you will crack and buy some add on service that you do not want, and eventually, after making you wait, we may get to your call and eventually give you the honor of spending money with us. This is the message I am hearing, and I am sick of it.

The latest one that put me over the edge was my run in with BlueMountain.com. I wanted to send one of their e-cards. I was happy to pay for it but that was not possible. You have to set up a subscription to get their cards (another pet peeve, but one rant at a time). They were willing to give a one week free membership, which I signed up for, and which I planned on promptly dropping as soon as the card was received and opened. A few days after it was received, I went back on their website to cancel out. Problem #1, you can't cancel your subscription via the website; you must call in. So I call. Problem #2, you have to call during business hours in order to cancel. So, I call in during the work day (something I loath....don't waste my work time; that is something only I have the privilege of doing). I navigate their damn phone tree entering all the information and confirming (several times) that yes, I want to end this "relationship".

It took about 15 minutes, but the part that drives me craziest is that I never actually spoke to a person. For some reason I had to call during work hours, navigate an overly complex system, just to end something I never wanted to begin with, all for the privilege of dealing with an automated system. Humm...it is almost like they want to make it so complicated that I will give up and let them charge my account every month....

In the end, nobody won. They got no money and I had to waste my time. I will not go back to them again; there are plenty of other options for e-cards which have yet to annoy me. Maybe their lame strategy works and it keeps people paying for a subscription that they don't invest the time to end, but I doubt it.

In any event, I am encouraging a boycott of all companies whose customer service phone line puts them through an unnecessarily long process, and especially those that make you listen to marketing campaigns instead of letting you talk to someone who can resolve the issue for which you called. I know this is an impossible uphill battle, but I'm going to try.

Happy shopping.