Jerry, Nick and I went to a popular restaurant chain (Bennigan's, if you must know) for dinner. We had a card for a FREE appetizer up to 6.99. The one we ordered was 7.99 and the waitress said she could not only charge us for the difference. I asked for the manager, who replied, "We do not have a button for that". After a bit of conversation she took a percentage off the bill which totaled 6.99... I asked her if that was so hard.

My cable co. just came out with a DVR unit. We already have Tivo. The cable DVR is 9.99 per month and TiVo is 12.99. I called TiVo and asked them if they had any promotion or if they could match the price. The rep said, "No, you should probably switch to the cable DVR".

Today I go to the bank to make a deposit for the school PTO. In the bag were a bunch of checks, about $20 in cash and $20 in Quarters... all quarters. The teller said that the coin machine was broken and she could not put the coin through. I asked her if she could hand count it and she replied, "No but you can call tomorrow to see if our machine it fixed".

What is going on??? Do companies not want to keep the customers they have? It seems to be all about computers, machines and buttons. I am all for technology but nothing is manual anymore... nobody goes out of their way to make the consumer happy. Company policy is written in stone. Loosen up people.