Enotes

The recall of a car seems to be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of proposition. General Motors is recalling cars almost as fast as they're making them, but what is worse---recalling cars or ignoring the problem? If anyone knows both sides of that sword, it's GM. Nearly 14 million GM cars have been recalled in 2014, and the year isn't half over. The latest mulligan for General Motors is the Chevy Aveo, which the other day became the 30th GM vehicle to be recalled in 2014. The 218,000 subcompact Aveos brought the grand total of recalled GM cars to 13.8 million. The latest recall involves Aveos in model years between 2004 and 2008. The daytime running light module in the dashboard center stack can overheat, melt and catch fire. Of course, nothing is worse than a recall born out of deaths, and GM knows all about that, too---with its infamous ignition switch debacle from earlier this year that is responsible for at least 13 deaths (accord...

I have just one question today for all the packagers of our food stuffs. A very simple question. Why is the expiration date a secret? I used to have a college roommate---who, if he read this, will know who he is---who was deathly afraid of consuming food or drink that was even one day past its expiration date. If that package of Rice-a-Roni had a date of June 17, 1984, and if it was June 18, 1984, my roommate wouldn't eat it. Period. Loaves of bread that had days of the week on their twist ties, rather than actual dates, would drive him nuts. "WEDNESDAY? WHICH Wednesday?" He wouldn't fall for the smell test. Even if that gallon of milk smelled perfectly fine, but it was one day past the expiration, it would get tossed down the drain. Why? "They put those dates for a reason," he would tell me. "Don't they?" I suppose, but still... Anyhow, back to my original question. Have you tried to locate expiration dates of food items?...

"Please be kind, rewind." That was the cute catch phrase printed in yellow font on the blue stickers, plastered onto the VHS tapes throughout Blockbuster Video stores. The evolution of technology and retail outlets associated with it come in bite sized pieces anymore. Or, should I say, "byte" sized pieces? Take Blockbuster Video, for example. It came out of nowhere less than 30 years ago and is now defunct. The company announced that its final 300 stores will be shuttered , as will its NetFlix-like disc-by-mail operation. I remember being at work Downriver, circa 1986, and my co-worker and friend Vito Lumetta came back from lunch and raved, pie-eyed, about this new video store he stumbled upon. "It's called Blockbuster and you should SEE all the videos!" Vito said, and though I'm paraphrasing, suffice it to say that his excitement was palpable. But back in '86, Blockbuster stores were huge. They occupied the space of a medium-sized ...

Every summer, I wonder the same thing. What might it be like to drive an ice cream truck? Can you make any money doing it? Is it boring? Or is it among the most fulfilling things to do in life? I don't know anyone, personally, who's commandeered a roving vehicle, selling frozen confections out of the back. So I can't draw on anyone's experience. Maybe you're reading this and are acting like Arnold Horshack from "Welcome Back, Kotter"---bouncing out of your seat, raising your hand and shouting, "OOH! OOH!" Maybe YOU know someone who has driven an ice cream truck. Maybe you yourself have. Maybe you do currently. Hey, I'll just be thrilled if you're reading this, period. I think about ice cream truck driving every summer because, of course, we have such trucks roaming our streets these days. The thing that strikes me though---and this would be a big negative for me---is the ad nauseam repetition of the truck's music. The ...

We're being surveyed to death but do you notice any appreciable uptick in customer service? You can't buy a taco anymore without being inundated with requests to take surveys. You can't conduct any business on the phone, hardly, without being asked to take "a quick, three-question survey on the quality of my service." Granted, many survey requests, from JC Penney to Del Taco, are accompanied by a chance to win something. Your name will get tossed into a cyber hat to win cash and prizes. Or so they say. This increase in requests for survey taking has been going on for several years. Yet I am still seeing the same level of crappy service. Or, at the very least, there doesn't seem to be any noticeable difference in service, other than being asked to take a survey about said service. I don't want to broad stroke brush the service industry, as I have been a part of it and continue to be in an indirect way. But what is happening with all the feedback tha...