This Is This

There’s too much choice.

Too many add-ons, optional extras, customisation and assortments make every decision so self important that you wonder whether your needs are less important than the thing you decide.

This week I was booking a holiday online (that almost sounds old-fashioned now, doesn’t it? “Online.” Hmmm.)

Anywhore, I chose a destination, city of departure, airport of city of departure, number of passengers, age of passengers, class of hotel, dates, preferred time of flight and class of cabin.

All good? Should be, but don’t offer me a twin fucking* room when you know we’re a party of four.

I hate being offered something I haven’t asked for. Trouble is I’ve worked behind a counter and if you say stuff like “you know if you get one of those doohickies, you get another whoosname for a fiver”, it actually works a lot of the time. I shifted more doohickies that summer than any other employee of Thingamees Ltd.**

And I’m reluctant to admit it, but if you ask your regulars often enough if they have a loyalty card, there’s a chance they’ll get one.

Everything from cars to coffee has more options than having a kid.

*I realise I used the phrase “twin fucking” in this post. The searches I’m going to get now. Actually it always surprises me from the web stats information how people turn up here looking for porn and then stay and read. I got a search last month for “Huey Lewis penis” and the person stayed for 15 minutes. Maybe they were looking for the power of love.

**A couple of fellow bloggers/colleagues here have been reminded of the policy on personal blogs, so I’m being careful about all previous employers as well. But whore, penis and twin fucking are OK, apparently.

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I’m reading one of those airplane safety leaflets, trying to get my bearings while I tread water, keeping morale of my fellow ill-fated passengers high by playing the intro to Maggie May while whistling loudly to attract the attention of any nearby ships.
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This entry was posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 7:20 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.