Tag: commerce

Tuesday’s Children

I met with Bob at Kean today so I could order a new automatic clutch for his Whizzer. (No, really!)

The patio was packed with moms and babies because the new expensive baby food store was having a grand opening Halloween event.

“Expensive baby food store” falls short of the mark. “Pomme Bébé” looks at first to be a high-end salon, art gallery, and Apple Store in one spot. Whiteness gleams tastefully. Sheer ivory surfaces, smock-clad employees, menu of the day in the style of an ice cream store. They sell organic and otherwise perfect food for infants.

So as Bob and I ordered bike parts on the Internet and bullshitted and played with his dog Mancha, this river of super-rich mothers flowed. They were all 20 and perfect forever, and their babies were all 6 months old and perfect forever. The baby carriages themselves were worth more than my car. They stretch across the sidewalk and have racks and racks of toys clacking above their passengers. More than a few were double wides with twin skulls bobbling in them.

Mancha slumped on our feet in a heavily adoring way and we skritched him. My iced tea was good.

Dept of Pure Evil: Genentech says “no substitutions”

Genentech makes an eye drug called Lucentis. It’s expensive: $2000/month. They also make a cancer drug called Avastin. It’s inexpensive: $40/month.

The two drugs are chemically very similar. So similar, in fact, that compounding pharmacies are repackaging Avastin and doctors are prescribing it for the eye problem.

Genentech doesn’t like this. They want the money for Lucentis. So, they’re stopping shipment of Avastin to all the pharmacies and sending it only to hospital pharmacies or directly to doctors. Furthermore, they’re refusing participate in the NIH study to confirm or reject the similar usefulness of the two drugs, and not even providing drugs at cost to the study as is customary.

Result? $1-$3 billion more a year of taxpayer money into Medicare, because almost all the patients involved are over 65. I think it’s great how the drug companies selflessly do research and development to keep us all healt… yeah.

Wall St. Journal article below.

article

THE MOTHER OF ALL BUTTLES

The “health” “plan” from my last job has still not paid any of the claims from February to March of this year.

Today I got a bill from a collection agency for an $800+ charge, now with added interest.

A month ago I spoke to a “rapid resolution expert” at the health plan who was shocked, shocked at the lack of payment and pressed lots of buttons and told me it would be resolved in 30 days.

Nothing was done.

Today I spoke to another “rapid resolution expert” who was even more shocked and promised me a written response in 48 hours and resolution within ten business days. He gave me a magic string of digits which supposedly will make the collection agency back off.

Once again let me observe that I am at the very top of the privilege ladder here, and I’m getting reamed really hard.

Open the drawer, give me the change you said would do me good

Middle class retail is so dead now.

Bob and I went on an expotition yesterday to get him some clothes. Off to Adventure 16 we went! He needed some swim trunks from Patagonia and a jacket and pants thing from Sierra Design that folds up into its own bag.

Because it’s September, the store had no swim trunks. They’re still in the Patagonia catalog, however. We asked if they could order them for us, and they indicated that this might be possible. They all stood there looking uncomfortable; we were the only customers in the store. It was clear that they just wanted us to leave.

One employee did find a jacket (but no pants) of the folds-into-its-own bag line. We again asked if they could be ordered for store delivery and there was another uncomfortable silence with mumbling. The manager had his back to us most of the time and was on the phone otherwise, and fiddling with pieces of paper.

We left. Expotition: failed.

Today we met at Panera and I fired up the laptop. The Patagonia website had the swim trunks he wanted at half price, $18 instead of $36. We got him three pair. The Sierra Designs site had the pants he wanted and referred us to the REI site, where we bought those as well.

The REI site wanted us to go to a store to pick up the stuff, and pointed out it was FREE! shipping this way. So we clicked that button, only to find out that “items for store pickup may have an extended delivery time compared to mail delivery.” Clearly they just wait for your item to show up in the regular weekly shipments and then at some time you get a phone call. Fuck that. We spent the shipping charge for Internet order.

When I was a kid, there were lots of stores. We had department stores, toy stores, specialty hobby stores, hardware stores, discount stores, all kinds! Some of the stores were in malls and others were not. Not all of them were chains.

That’s just gone now. The department stores were eaten by the big box chains. Same with toys and hardware. The discount stores became the big box stores. Everything is a chain.

Now it’s all poor folks or rich folks, no bourgeois. The middle-class shopping experience has disappeared. If you have a shitload of money you can go to Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus or some boutique place like Restoration Hardware and blow five bills on a few things. If not, you’re going to Target or Wal-Mart.

Bob is 60 so he finds this incomprehensible. But he likes the Internet. Click, click, done. He gave me $140 in cash to buy his shit with my laptop and then we had iced tea and bullshitted.