My wife and I changed dentists recently, which meant filling out a pile of “New Patient” forms. As I’ve come to expect, the forms asked for every conceivable piece of information, and some of the questions were repeated two or three times for no apparent reason. All told, it took me a full three hours […]

Recently, I have been faced with the rather frustrating task of terminating the relationship with a vendor that we hired only a few months ago, and locating a new vendor to replace them. Without getting into the details, the first vendor simply lacked the expertise to complete the project they took on. They weren’t familiar […]

The last time I went to the grocery store, I flagged down a manager so that I could convey a rather strange request. You see, during the previous trip, they undercharged me by about $15-20. I didn’t notice the error until after I got home, so I just kept the receipt on hand so I […]

I’ve been using the same brands of paper products (e.g. tissues and paper towels) for years. Actually, I’m so particular about these items that I always make sure to buy the exact product variants that I’ve used before. Thus, it should come as no surprise that I’m quick to notice if the manufacturers have changed […]

Though I haven’t kept an exact count, I believe my local Trader Joe’s has made significant changes to the store layout at least twice this year. Now, I can certainly understand the need to shake things up once in a while, e.g. to accomodate major changes in the product assortment or new information about how […]

Let’s say that you run an online service that is primarily used by other businesses. As part of the service, you send email reminders to your business customers when their immediate attention is required for a specific issue. Sometimes, you have no control over when these messages are sent, since issues can arise at any […]

A few days ago, I needed to look up an old support case that we had logged with a vendor. Their website keeps a record of all the historical cases, and it was easy to locate the right one. But when I opened up the page for that case, only the most recent set of […]

To make sending holiday packages a little bit easier (and avoid the dreaded post office), I decided to open an account with one of the national shipping companies. This process involved the following steps: – Create an online services login – Create a shipping account – Add payment info to the shipping account Sounds simple […]

While sending a package with a well-known delivery service, I came across a comparison table that described various add-on services that they offer. The table looked simple enough: there was one column for the name of the service, and another column labeled “Fee?”. I would have expected the second column to have a checkmark, “X”, […]