We particularly enjoyed this Monday morning post from Margaret Graf, reflecting on 2020 as it draws to a close…
Dear Powers That Be (PTB):
I have been a loyal & normally enthusiastic user of your yearly products for a very long time, usually with only minor grumps & complaints. This past year was the final straw. Frankly, 2020 did not measure up to my expectations & in fact, was one of the worst ever. I admit that I may have been a bit overly enthusiastic in the beginning, it being the start of a new decade & all, but really…it began to fall apart almost from the beginning & only got worse as time went on, pell-melling me & all your other users through a whole year with political farces, a world wide pandemic, weather calamities, fire disasters, extreme social injustice & fatal protests fueling a depressive mood that has brought us to our knees, fairly weeping in despair & crying for mercy. When I say “we” I mean the people, here in U,S, around the world, humans everywhere subjected to an onslaught of your whims & the defective product you foisted upon us. In short, 2020 was too complicated to use, impossible to assemble, came with no warnings or directions on use & was just plain defective nearly from the beginning. The pandemic was the really ‘big one’ wiping out a serious number of us, causing businesses to close, jobs lost, long food lines & despair. Not satisfied with that, you sent along wildfires, floods (never in the same place of course) & economic penalties to boot. Really?? What did we do to deserve this shabby & unconscionable treatment at your hands?? THERE WAS NO LETUP ALL YEAR LONG! Only in the last month, have we begun to be able to counteract your product & slow the disintegration of the whole mess. Thanks to the cleverness of our scientists, we now have 2 (with more on the way shortly) counter-measures (we call them vaccines) to this horror you have visited upon us.
SO…in the spirit of negotiation & recognizing our long standing loyalty to the years you have been kind enough to bless us with in the past, I propose a negotiation, without which I sincerely believe we will have lost all faith in your product & will have to look elsewhere for our future. You are not the only planet in the universe, you know.
I sincerely ask…no demand, on the part of all my fellow humans, that in order to show your good faith you grant us a refund. Minimally, it should reflect the period of use from March-December, when we were hardest hit & before we began to suspect the inadequacy & continued dangerous consumption of your product. I propose that you grant a refund, to each & everyone of us, beginning January 1, 2021, in the form of adding 10 months to the end of each of our lifetimes on Planet Earth to compensate for the period noted above. It is a fair & equitable solution, with little cost or effort to you, not nearly adequate to compensate us for the misery you have cost, but as an expression of your good will toward the future. Please take this demand seriously and reply forthwith.