Thursday, December 24, 2009

Empty Gestures

So, a local Mazda dealership has been advertising it will give away free cars if Nashville gets 5” of snow on Christmas Day. Which sorta makes me wonder why they even bothered.

According to NOAA’s Nashville White Christmas Climatology:
Since the winter of 1884 and 1885, when snowfall records began in Nashville, snow has fallen 23 times on Christmas Day. Only 9 have been a measurable amount. A measurable amount is one tenth of an inch or more.

From a statistical standpoint, there is a 19 percent chance of a trace or more of snow on Christmas Day, and only a 7 percent chance of measurable snow.

The last time snow fell on Christmas was in 2002 when a trace occurred.

The last time measurable snow fell on Christmas was 1993 when 0.3 inches occurred. 0.3 inches also fell on Christmas in 1992 in downtown Nashville, but 1 to 2 inches fell in the Joelton and Ridgtop areas.

It’s 54 degrees and raining right now. We just don’t get that much snow here; I don’t know if we’ve ever received five inches at one time, at least recently. Certainly not on Christmas Day.

This Mazda dealership’s “free car” offer has annoyed Mr. Beale to no end. It’s obvious they only made it because they know they won’t have to pay up, which is a classic dick move if you ask me. They might as well have offered to give away free cars if martians landed in LP Field.

Last week when we were in New York and that big snowstorm hit, Mr. Beale was wishing it would snow five inches on Christmas Day, just teach that car dealership a lesson.

It really annoys me when businesses and corporations treat us like we’re idiots. BlueCross/BlueShield of Tennessee called me no less than a dozen times to tell me about their amazing, wonderful “wellness” program which they are now calling MVMT for Life. Basically it’s just a website where a virtual coach named Rachel tells you to lose weight and quit smoking and you make proclamations like “I will loose weight by using the stairs at our office.”

That’s all very well and good but I don’t need my insurance company wasting its time and money harassing me to sign up for this thing. And I did get daily phone calls from a real, live person telling me about how I needed to sign up. I don’t want a website, I’d rather have more concrete benefits. How about being able to get more than one blood test a year covered? Or more than one wellness visit a year covered? Heck, if you’re really on the “wellness” bandwagon, how about covering things like gym memberships or counseling with a nutritionist?

We’re tired of these empty PR gestures. We see them for what they are. They're dick moves, plain and simple, and it seems that's all we're getting these days.